\\\E  UNIVERSE 


JY-SOl^ 


THE 


FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


A  brief  history  of  the   financial  agitation,  legislation 

and  condition  of  the  United  States,  from  1890 

to  1895  ;  followed  by  a  catechism — 

questions    and    answers — in 

support  of  what 

precedes. 


-BY- 


NEIL  W.  CAROTHERS. 


STANDARD'  PUBLISHING  COMPANY, 
CHATTANOOGA,  TENNESSEE. 


COPYRIGHTED   IN  1895 
BY  NEIL  W.  CAROTHERS. 


Stack 
Annex 

5 
031 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Introduction 5 

Chapter  I,  The  Meaning  of  Dear  Money 11 

Chapter  II,  Unconditional  Repeal  of  the  Sher- 

"man  Law 24 

Chapter  III,  Blessings  Flowing  from  the  Un- 
conditional Repeal  of  the  Sherman  Law 39 

Chapter  IV,  The   People   now    Thinking    for 

Themselves 50 

Reply  to  Critics 73 


2003143 


PRESS   OF 

MACGOWAN  &  COOKE, 

CHATTANOOGA,  TENN. 


INTRODUCTION. 


In  1873  silver  was  demonetized  in  the  United 
States ;  that  is,  silver  was  denied  the  right  to  be 
coined  into  money  at  the  mints.  Some  say  this 
legislation  was  procured  surreptitiously  and  crimi- 
nally. However  this  may  be,  it  is  at  least  certain 
that  the  real  character  of  the  legislation  was  un- 
known to  a  majority  of  those  responsible  for  it,  in- 
cluding the  President  himself,  General  Grant, 
who  approved  the  act.  Neither  gold  nor  silver  was 
then  in  circulation — paper  currency  being  the  al- 
most exclusive  circulating  medium — and  it  was 
sometime  before  the  legislation  in  question  attrac- 
ted public  attention  and  concern.  The  financial 
question  in  this  country  had  previously  been  ;  not 
how  to  reduce  our  money  supply,  but  rather  how 
sufficiently  and  legitimately  to  increase  it.  in  order 
to  keep  pace  with  our  rapid  development  and  grow- 
ing commerce.  It  was  far  from  the  minds  of  the 
masses  to  imagine  that  silver  would  be  demone- 
tized, and  it  was  correspondingly  difficult  after- 
wards for  them  to  believe  that  it  had  been  done. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


For  a  long  while  the  act  had  but  few  apologists 
or  defenders.  But,  despite  the  terrible  panic  which 
followed,  .and  the  protests  of  the  people,  through 
political  platforms  and  otherwise,  the  first  legisla- 
tion in  the  direction  of  the  restoration  of  silver  was 
only  a  compromise  with  those  influences  which  had 
secured  its  demonetization.  It  was  partially  re- 
stored in  1878,  by  what  was  known  as  the  Bland 
Act.  With  this,  and  the  confidence  of  the  people 
that  eventually  silver  would  occupy  its  former 
place,  prosperity  returned,  and,  without  substantial 
interruption,  continued  until  1890,  when  the  famil- 
iar law  known  as  the  Sherman  Act  was  passed. 
This  legislation,  though  still  a  compromise  with 
the  contractionists,  was  understood  by  most  people 
to  be  an  additional  recognition  to  silver.  There 
soon  followed,  however,  a  phenomenal  and  unprece- 
dented political  condition. 

Close  upon  the  passage  of  the  Sherman  Act  a 
majority  of  the  leading  newspapers  and  periodicals 
of  the  country,  as  one  great  army  under  the  drill 
and  leadership  of  a  general  knowing  nothing  but 
to  command  and  exact  servile  obedience,  fell  into 
line,  and,  with  clamor  almost  deafening,  marched 
with  solid  phalanx  in  a  common  war  upon  silver. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  • 


We  then  heard  for  the  first  time  in  this  country 
that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  bi-metallism ;  that 
our  financial  system  could  no  longer  stand  upon  a 
foundation  of  both  silver  and  gold,  but  could  only 
rest  upon  gold,  however  narrow  that  foundation. 
We  were  taught  the  new  doctrine  that  the  measure 
of  a  dollar's  value  was  not  what  it  would  purchase 
when  coined,  but  what  it  was  worth  before  becom- 
ing money ;  that  money  was  in  no  sense  the 
creature  of  government,  but  something  possessing 
inherent,  intrinsic  worth ;  that  it  was  not  the  rep- 
resentative of  real  value  in  other  things  which  sus- 
tain life  and  bring  comfort  and  luxury,  but  pos- 
sessed value  in  itself,  wholly  independent  of  gov- 
ernment ;  and  that  this  value  inhered  only  in  gold. 
A  new  construction  was  forced  upon  that  clause  of 
the  constitution  which  provides  that  congress  shall 
have  power  to  coin  money  from  gold  and  silver,  and 
the  power  to  coin  it  from  silver  was  denied.  Those 
who  sincerely  believed  that  silver  was  as  fit  a  metal 
as  gold  for  purposes  of  money  (and  infinitely  more 
so  for  the  numberless  small  transactions  of  daily 
life)  asserted  their  convictions  at  the  expense  of  an 
assault  upon  their  integrity.  They  were  denounced 
as  being  repudiators,  and  dishonest.  It  was  held  to 


FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


be  plebeian  to  advocate  anything  but  a  gold  stan- 
dard. This  of  course  tended  to  hold  in  line  all  aris- 
tocrats, and  gained  numberless  recruits  from 
among  those  who  had  not  been  so  classed  before, 
but  who  aspired  to  be..  It  was  a  golden  opportunity 
not  wasted. 

Common  people  were  taught  that  the  money 
question  was  beyond  their  ken  in  every  particular, 
that  it  was  an  abstruse  and  exact  science — some- 
thing never  before  taught  by  human  experience,  his- 
tory or  the  schools.  Aristotle  had  said,  more  than 
2000  years  before,  that  "money  exists  not  by  nature, 
but  by  law"  and  this  had  not  been  seriously  con- 
troverted during  the  intervening  centuries,  until 
dawn  of  the  period  mentioned. 

• 

The  slogan  of  this  modern  invasion  was  "  a 
sound  currency  and  an  honest  dollar,"  and  eternal 
war  upon  the  "cheap  dollar."  As  no  honest  man 
could  favor  a  dishonest  dollar,  and  no  patriot  or 
just  man  could  advocate  anything  short  of  a  sound 
currency,  this  war  cry  seemed  to  embody  the  very 
soul  of  patriotism.  It  captured  all  that  class  who 
leave  others  to  do  their  thinking,  and  millions  who 
had  previously  entertained  well  defined  views  on 
the  money  question  abandoned  it  wholly  to  others. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


The  conflict,  though  severe,  proved  an  unequal 
one,  and  the  majority  went  down  before  the  organ- 
ized, equipped  and  disciplined  minority.  Strong 

+ 

men  succumbed  to  the  inevitable,  while  weaker 
ones  and  time-servers  deserted  to  the  enemy's 
ranks.  As  the  smoke  of  battle  cleared  away,  vic- 
tory was  seen  perching  upon  the  banner  of  mono- 
metallism in  America.  We  are  today  beholding 
and  reaping  its  benign  fruits  !  Monarchies,  under 

r, 

like  influences,  had  seen  similar  triumphs,  but  few 
had  believed  that  such  fate  awaited  the  New  World. 

Is  the  temporary  victory  just  described  to  re- 
main our  portion?  The  renewed  conflict,  in  which 
the  defeated  are  now  the  aggressors,  will  determine 
that  question. 

The  four  chapters  comprising  this  volume  were 
written  for  newspaper  publication,  in  which  form 
they  originally  appeared.  With  a  few  changes 
they  are  now  reproduced,  each  chapter  bearing  the 
date  of  the  time  at  which  it  was  written.  The 
reader  is  left  to  determine  their  soundness  or  un- 
soundness  as  practical  thoughts  on  a  circulating 
medium  and  a  financial  policy.  To  the  mind  of 
the  author  they  portray  the  various  stages  and  final 
results  of  the  recent  financial  struggle  in  this 


10  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

country.  And  they  are  now  offered  to  the  public 
with  the  conviction  in  the  author's  mind  that  the 
question  discussed  is  fraught  with  consequences 
equal  in  gravity  to  the  first  struggle  of  this  coun- 
try for  independence.  .  N.  W.  0. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE  MEANING  OF  DEAR  MONEY. 


September,  1892. 

The  readiness  with  which  the  American  people 
are  now  misled  and  deceived  by  every  argument 
against  and  assault  upon  the  cheap  dollar,  so-called, 
is  fraught  with  infinite  possibilities  for  harm. 
However  far  beyond  the  reach  of  the  masses  may 
be  a  sufficiency  of  high  priced  dollars,  (again 
using  a  term  which  is  misleading),  yet  millions  of 
them  are  now  joining  loyally  and  lustily  in  the 
clamor  against  the  "cheap  dollar."  It  is  a  term  of 
derision  in  which  people  indulge  without  stopping 
to  reflect  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  cheap 
dollar  or  high  priced  dollar,  but  that  these  are  only 
relative  terms  which  mean^that  those  things  for 
which  a  dollar  is  exchanged  are  either  high  priced 
or  low  priced.  A  dollar  is  an  absolute  thing — so 
much  silver  or  gold,  circulating  as  a  medium  of 
exchange  by  decree  of  government ;  the  yard  stick, 
so  to  speak,  by  which  the  value  of  other  things  is 


12  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

determined.  Without  government  we  could  have 
no  such  thing  as  a  dollar. 

A  cheap  dollar  simply  means  a  high  price  for 
that  which  is  exchanged  for  it.  The  laborer  who 
gets  a  dollar  for  a  day's  work  pays  twice  as  much 
for  that  dollar  as  he  would  have  paid  had  he  gotten 
two  dollars  for  the  same  day's  labor.  In  other 
words,  he  gets  a  high  priced  dollar  when  he  gets 
only  one  instead  of  two  for  a  day's  work.  It  is 
right  difficult  to  perceive,  therefore,  why  the 
laborer  should  join  in  the  crusade  against  the  al- 
leged cheap  dollar,  when  to  him  it  simply  means 
more  money  for  his  day's  work. 

When  a  farmer  sells  a  given  quantity  of  pro- 
duce for  a  dollar,  he  receives  a  higher  priced  dollar 
for  his  product  than  if  he  had  gotten  two  dollars 
for  it;  but  that  dollar  will  go  no  further  toward 
liquidating  a  mortgage  which  might  hang  over  his 
farm — a  mortgage  created  perhaps  when  money 
was  cheaper,  or  rather,  when  property  was  higher. 

If  $10,000  will  buy  a  given  piece  of  property, 
the  dollars  come  twice  as  high,  or,  what  is  equiva- 
lent, the  property  goes  twice  as  cheap  as  would 
have  been  the  case  had  it  required  $20,000  to  pur- 
chase the  same  property.  And  should  the  property 


THE  FIFTY-' 'E.\T  DOLL  AH.  13 

owner  owe  $10,000,  he  would  of  course  be  cleaned 
up  on  selling  for  that  sum,  while  by  selling  for 
$20,000  there  would  be  a  surplus  in  pocket  of  $10-. 
000.  It  would  be  needless  to  try  and  persuade  him 
that  he  was  worse  off  for  having  these  ten  thousand 
"  cheap  dollars." 

The  merchant  who  has  marked  down  the  price 
of  his  goods,  because  dollars  are  unusually  high 
and  hard  to  reach,  and  stands  idly  behind  his 
counter  trembling  before  the  spectre  of  impending 
bankruptcy,  might  be  better  off  if  dollars  were  a  lit- 
tle cheaper  and  more  readily  exchangeable  for  his 
goods.  And  might  not  the  manufacturer,  who  has 
found  that  the  higher  priced  the  dollar,  the  less 
inclined  it  is  to  seek  his  wares,  find  it  profitable  to 
check  the  increasing  value  of  a  dollar? 

It  is  needless  to  proceed  further  on  this  line,  to 
show  that  every  class  whose  stock  in  trade  is  some- 
thing else  than  money,  as  labor  and  skill,  products 
of  the  field  or  mine,  merchandise,  manufactures, 
or  real  estate,  is  interested  in  a  dollar  that  does  not 
and  will  not  increase  in  purchasing  power.  And 
what  is  true  of  each  class  taken  seperately  is  of 
course  true  of  the  whole.  Manifestly,  therefore, 
only  those  are  interested  in  a  high-priced  dollar 


14  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

whose  possessions  consist  wholly  or  largely  in  dol- 
lars, or  their  equivalent,  promises  from  others  to 
pay  dollars.  It  is,  after  all,  simply  a  question  of 
what  one's  earthly  possessions  consist  in ;  and  of 
the  two  general  classes  into  which  the  whole  people 
are  divided  on  this  question  (not  in  sentiment 
necessarily,  but  in  fact)  it  is  unnecessary  to  say 
which  constitutes  the  overwhelming  majority. 

The  money  lender,  constituting  one  in  a  hun- 
dred, perhaps,  of  the  whole  number,  is  clearly  and 
justly  entitled,  from  the  standpoint  of  self  interest, 
to  contend  for  the  high-priced  dollar ;  but  his  in- 
terests, in  the  very  nature  of  things,  are  opposed  to 
those  of  the  remaining  ninety-nine.  Henry  Clews, 
an  opulent  banker  of  New  York  City,  insults  the 
intelligence  of  the  American  people,  therefore, 
whenever  he  essays  to  instruct  them  as  to  their  in- 
terests on  finance — unless  perchance  he  should  ad- 
vise them  against  his  own  interests. 

The  wealth  of  the  country  is  estimated,  accord- 
ing to  the  census  of  1890,  to  be  about  $1000  to  every 
individual.  The  circulating  medium  per  capita,  ac- 
cording to  the  highest  estimates,  is  about  $25 ;  that 
is,  the  ratio  between  money  and  all  forms  of  prop- 
erty, according  to  these  figures,  is  one  to  forty. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  15 

When,  therefore,  the  purchasing  power  of  a  dollar 
increases  one  per  cent,  or  in  any  other  ratio,  prop- 
erty suffers  a  corresponding  loss  forty  times  as 
great.  This,  perhaps,  would  be  of  no  consequence 
if  there  were  no  creditor  and  debtor  classes,  and 
the  circulating  medium  were  distributed  with  all 
forms  of  property,  in  uniform  proportions  of  one  to 
forty.  But  such  is  not,  and  of  necessity  cannot  be, 
the  condition.  This  being  true,  it  is  nothing  short 
of  a  crime  for  a  government,  after  its  people  have 
adjusted  themselves  to  a  circulating  medium,  to 
legislate  so  as  to  contract  the  currency,  or  to  lend 
encouragement  to  those  who  are  powerful  enough 
and  selfish  enough  to  bring  about  the  same  result. 
The  first  crime  in  that  direction  was  committed  in 
this  country  in  1873,  when  silver  was  quietly  denied 
free  coinage.  The  financial  condition  of  the  country 
today  is  a  demonstration  of  the  fact  that  the  first 
restriction  upon  silver  was  a  financial  failure,  and 
that  no  expedient  since  (including  the  Sherman 
Bill)  has  been  equal  to  remedying  the  evil. 

Inflation  of  the  currency  no  sane  and  honest 
man  would  advocate ;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  an 
undue  estimate  of  the  dollar  drives  it  from  trade 
and  produces  commercial  paralysis. 


16  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

Free  coinage  of  silver  is  as  much  needed  to 
keep  the  existing  supply  of  currency  moving  as  it 
is  to  replenish  that  supply.  Millions  of  dollars  are 
now  lying  idle  in  the  metropolitan  banks  of  the 
country,  while  industries  and  trade  throughout 
the  land  are  languishing  and  suffering.  The  intelli- 
gence of  the  country  is  constantly  insulted  with 
the  statement  that  so  many  millions  of  dollars  are 
now  lying  idle  in  the  bajiks  of  New  York  city  and 
can  be  borrowed  at  low  rates  of  interest ;  from  which 
the  argument  is  drawn  that  money  is  now  cheap. 
Nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  out  of  a  thousand 
of  the  people  are  not  in  condition  to  borrow  that 
money  ;  but  they  have  other  things  of  value  which 
they  are  powerless  to  exchange  for  it,  and  which  it 
would  "be  possible  to  do  but  for  the  fact  that  the 
money  is  not  cheap. 

It  is  poor  comfort  to  a  man,  starving  for  a 
drink  of  water,  to  tell  him  that  there  is  a  cast 
iron,  steel-bound  tank  near  by,  containing  a  mil- 
lion gallons,  but  which  he  is  powerless  either  to 
reach  or  to  open.  There  is  no  scarcity  of  water, 
but  as  to  him  it  is  beyond  all  price. 

The  value  of  money  is  no  more  determined  by 
what  it  will  loan  for,  than  the  value  of  a  horse  or  a 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  17 

pocket  knife  may  be  determined  in  the  same  way. 
A  dollar's  value  is  ascertained  by  what  it  will 
purchase. 

But  would  free  coinage  remedy  the  evil?  It 
would,  if  we  accept  as  true  the  cry  of  the  goldites, 
that  free  coinage  wonld  create  cheaper  dollars  ;  and 
that  proposition  every  one  is  ready  to  admit,  with 
a  proper  qualification  upon  the  term ;  that  is, 
that  a  cheaper  dollar  means  a  higher  price  for 
what  it  buys.  Dollars  that  have  no  capacity  to 
increase  in  value  hunt  investment  and  develop- 
ment, and  create  activity.  High  priced  dollars, 
finding  nothing  so  inviting  as  to  remain  intact,  or 
to  be  loaned  for  more  dollars,  shun  investment  and 
enterprise.  It  is  very  true  that  when  a  man  has 
need  to  borrow,  it  is  to  his  advantage  to  do  so  at 
low  rate  of  interest ;  but  the  fact  that  millions  of 
dollars  are  lying  idle  for  purposes  of  lending,  and 
not  for  investment,  is  no  evidence  of  prosperity, 
and  is  only  an  advantage  to  the  few  who  are  in 
reach  of  that  money. 

President  Harrison,  to  mislead  the  masses — 
whether  deliberately  or  unwittingly — said,  on  being 
notified  of  his  recent  renomination,  that  the  first 
mission  on  which  a  "cheap  dollar"  would  start  out 


18  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

would  be  to  pay  some  poor  laborer  for  his  day's 
work  !  He  should  have  known,  perhaps  did  know, 
that  high-priced  dollars  are  not  the  kind  that  are 
in  search  of  a  laborer's  toil,  but  are  rather  with- 
drawn from  everything  that  employs  and  renumer- 
ates  labor.  If  this  is  not  true  how  does  it  happen, 
as  an  historical  fact,  that  in  every  age  and  in  every 
land,  we  find  idleness  and  want  just  in  proportion 
as  labor  is  cheap  and  the  money  received  for  it 
high-priced.  Go  to  those  countries  where  one 
dollar  will  buy  a  week's  labor,  and  you  find  idle- 
ness, squalor  and  misery  in  corresponding  ratio 
to  the  high  price  at  which  that  dollar  has  sold. 

Much  prejudice  is  felt  toward  the  so-called 
cheap  dollar  because  people  are  taught  to  think  of 
it  as  they  do  a  cheap  hat,  or  an  indifferent  article 
of  food.  They  forget  that  the  value  of  a  dollar  is 
not  intrinsic,  but  extrinsic  and  artificial.  It  can- 
not serve  the  purpose  of  food,  raiment  or  shelter; 
but  the  greater  the  facility  with  which  these  need- 
ful things  will  exchange  for  it,  the  better. 

Another  fruitful  source  of  delusion  on  this 
question  is  the  sad  memory  of  Confederate  money, 
so-called.  In  the  first  place  it  was  not  money,  but 
a  remote  promise  to  become  money,  made  by  an 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  19 

arbitrary  government  not  established  as  such  be- 
fore the  world,  but  fighting  for  existence.  The  use 
of  it  as  money  was  little  more  than  gambling  in 
futures,  and  as  a  circulating  medium  it  was  simply 
multiplied  in  direct  proportion  to  its  uncertainty. 

A  government's  money  is  just  as  stable  as  that 
government — no  more,  no  less.  And  an  assault 
upon  any  form  of  our  money  is  an  assault  upon 
the  government  itself.  We  had  tories  during  the 
Revolution  who  truckled  to  England,  and  were  a 
menace  to  this  country ;  and  the  present  war  upon 
silver  in  the  United  States  had  its  origin  in  the 
same  spirit,  and  means  the  same  enmity. 

Something  more  than  a  century  ago  the  United 
States  (not  then  in  existence  as  such)  made  a  ven- 
ture— the  most  hazardous  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
most  successful  on  the  other — known  to  the  world's 
history.  It  declared  for  a  republic,  wholly  in 
repudiation  of,  and  dissimilar  to  the  monarchies 
and  aristocracies  of  Europe.  Afterwards  we  went 
even  so  far  as  to  hold  that  it  would  be  an  affront  to 
the  United  States  for  Europe  to  attempt  to  engraft 
her  peculiar  policies  of  government  upon  any  of  the 
countries  of  America,  and  by  this — the  Monroe 
doctrine — we  have  proudly  stood  for  three-quarters 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


of  a  century.  European  governments  were  then, 
and  are  now,  founded  upon  the  doctrine  that  the 
rights  of  the  classes — the  few — are  superior  to 
those  of  the  masses,  and  of  this  general  doctrine 
their  financial  legislation  and  policy  have  always 
partaken.  As  a  result  the  great  mass  of  European 
wealth  is  in  the  hands  of  a  comparative  few — a 
condition  which  has  never  been,  and  will  never  be, 
the  result  wholly  of  natural  laws  unaided  by  arti- 
ficial or  human  laws.  What  England  did,  there- 
fore, pursuant  to  her  peculiar  policy,  to  debase 
silver,  and  what  she  forced  other  European  coun- 
tries to  do  in  the  same  direction,  by  reason  of  her 
relations  to  and  dominance  over  them,  was  hardly 
a  token  that  we  should  follow  suit. 

If  a  silver  dollar  is  now  worth  a  gold  dollar 
(and  every  one  knows  it  is,  since  they  pass  current 
alike,  in  and  out  of  bank)  while^the  silver  bullion 
entering  into  the  dollar  sells  for  less  than  a  dollar, 
how  can  it  possibly  be  that  increasing  the  value  of 
silver  bullion,  by  making  its  coinage  free,  would 
reduce  the  relative  value  of  a  silver  dollar?  If  so, 
we  have  this  statement  in  the  rule  of  three : 
Sixty-nine  cents  worth  of  silver  is  to  a  good  dollar, 
as  100  cents  is  to  a  bad  dollar!  The  truth  of  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  21 

whole  matter  is  simply  this :  Free  coinage  of 
silver  would  cheapen  the  silver  dollar  and  gold 
dollar  alike. 

Another  device  to  deceive  the  people  is  in 
constantly  speaking  of  gold  as  the  more  precious 
metal  of  the  two.  This  is  undeniably  true  in  the 
fact  that  it  exists,  or  is  supposed  to  exist,  in  smaller 
quantities.  But  much  smaller  quantity  is  used  to 
make  a  dollar.  Is  a  gold  dollar  more  precious  than 
a  silver  dollar?  Gold  dollars  are  so  little  seen  or 
heard  of  in  ordinary  commercial  transactions,  that 
the  average  person  hardly  knows  their  capacity 
from  actual  experience.  But  why  talk  of  the 
sixty-nine  cent  silver  dollar  if  a  gold  dollar  cannot 
secure  it  for  less  than  100  cents? 

Uninfluenced  by  legislation  the  price  of  bull- 
ion,  whether  gold  or  silver,. would  be  governed  like 
any  other  commodity,  by  the  natural  law  of  supply 
and  demand.  But  when  an  artificial  demand  is 
created  by  legislation,  for  one  and  not  for  the  other, 
there  is  no  operation  of  this  natural  law.  Abandon 
the  use  of  gold  and  silver  as  money,  and  their  in- 
trinsic value  for  other  purposes  would  soon  be  de- 
termined, under  this  law  of  supply  and  demand. 
Such  value  will  never  be  determined,  however,  so 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


long  as  they  are  used  for  purposes  of  money. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  the  intrinsic  value  of  a 
dollar.  The  instrinsic  value  of  a  bushel  of  wheat, 
or  a  coat,  lies  in  its  use — in  its  consumption.  To 
make  a  dollar  available  we  must  part  with  it. 

All  legislation  with  reference  to  a  commodity 
out  of  which  mony  is  made  affects  the  price  of 
that  commodity — favorably  or  unfavorably — just  as 
the  legislation  is  favorable  or  unfavorable.  If  the 
people  would  keep  these  simple  truths  in  mind,  it 
would  be  impossible  to  mislead  them  by  decrying 
silver  on  account  of  its  alleged  market  price — a 
market  price  controlled  by  legislation  ! 

It  has  been  stated  that  our  money,  whether 
gold  or  silver,  is  as  stable  and  good  as  the  govern- 
ment that  created  it.  But  the  advocate  of  a  gold 
standard  replies:  "Suppose  our  government  should 
fail?"  The  tories  feared  the  same  thing  in  1776, 
when  this  country  set  out  to  establish  a  govern- 
ment ;  hence  the  loyalty  of  the  tory  to  England 
and  her  behests. 

Should  our  government  pass  away,  whatever 
gold  we  may  possess  would,  as  bullion,  be  probably 
worth  more  than  our  silver,  by  reason  of  the 
special  legislative  favors  gold  has  secured  abroad. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


But  it  will  not  then  be  distributed  among  the  peo- 
ple. It  will  be  just  where  it  is  now — either  in  the 
hands  or  control  of  the  few  whose  selfish  designs 
are  now  being  carried  out  in  the  present  demand 
for  a  contracted  currency. 

Are  we  now  prepared,  allowing  that  such  time 
might  come,  to  place  the  great  superstructure  of 
our  commerce,  manufactures  and  yet  undeveloped 
resources,  upon  gold  as  the  only  basis  of  financial 
credit ;  or  shall  we  let  silver  share  the  weight? 
That  is  the  issue,  however  much  it  may  be  ob- 
scured. We  know  that  the  cry  of  hard  times  is 
abroad  in  the  land,  while  there  is  no  scarcity  of 
the  wherewithal  to  be  fed  and  clothed.  If  vicious 
financial  legislation,  (heretofore  enacted  and  yet 
promised  for  the  future)  be  not  the  cause  of  the 
trouble,  then  the  government  is  powerless  to  do  for 
its  people  what  governments  are  established  for, 
and  we  had  better  return  to  a  primitive  state. 
Governments  were  never  designed  to  create  want 
in  the  midst  of  plenty. 


CHAPTER  II. 


UNCONDITIONAL  KEPEAL    OF    THE    SHER- 
MAN LAW. 


JULY,  1893. 

Despite  the  fact  that  there  are  already  thous- 
ands in  every  community  who  are  suffering  from  a 
contracted,  or  rather  an  inactive  currency,  there 
are  few  who,  now,  are  not  ready  to  throw  up  their 
hats  and  proclaim  aloud  for  a  yet  higher-priced 
dollar.  To  my  mind  it  seems  that  we  have  to  no 
purpose  seen  factories  shut  down,  corporations  and 
firms  retire  from  the  field  of  activity  into  the 
shades  of  hopeless  bankruptcy,  individuals  ruined, 
and  idleness  multiplied  to  a  degree  never  before 
seen  in  this  land ;  because,  as  I  contemplate!  the 
situation,  this  havoc  is  due  to  the  relentless  war 
upon  silver,  begun  in  1890,  which  has  by  this  time 
almost  whipped  all  opposition  into  submission. 

The  same  influence  (call  it  Wall  street,  Lom- 
bard street,  the  money  power,  or  what  not)  that 
brought  about  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  1873 — 
at  which  time  the  struggle  on  this  question  really 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


began — is  now  getting  in  its  finishing  work  in  an 
organized  effort  to  convince  the  people  that  in  the 
total  annihilation  of  silver  as  money,  lies  their  sal- 
vation. And  the  success  with  which  this  argument 
is  made  lies  in  the  fact  that  coincident  with  the 
present  financial  crisis  is  the  existence  and  opera- 
tion of  the  Sherman  act.  Great  care  is  taken, 
however,  not  to  tell  the  people  that  the  Sherman 
act  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  free  coinage, 
of  silver.  In  other  words,  it  is  argued  that  we  now 
substantially  have  free  coinage  of  silver,  and  there- 
fore relief  will  come  only  in  the  absolute  demoneti- 
zation of  silver. 

The  stamping,  by  government  authority,  of  a 
given  amount  of  metal  as  a  dollar  is  one  thing ;  an*d 
the  goverment's  becoming  a  mercantile  establish- 
ment for  dealing  in  that  metal — and  that,  too, 
aftef  first  limiting  the  demand  for  it — is  an  entirely 
different  thing.  Therefore,  the  only  consistent  and 
logical  demand,  along  with  that  for  the  repeal  of 
the  Sherman  act  (which  is  now  a  universally  ad- 
mitted evil)  is  the  further  demand  that  it  be  sub- 
stituted with  the  free  coinage  of  silver. 

The  Honorable  Henry  Hucks  Gibbs,  once  gov- 
ernor of  the  Bank  of  England,  and  now  President 


26  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

of  the  Bi-metallic  League  of  Great  Britain,  in  a 
recent  exhaustive  argument  in  the  Forum,  for  the 
free  coinage  of  silver  in  England  as  well  as 
America,  said  substantially  that  he  had  sought  in 
vain  for  evidence  that  money  of  a  yellow  metal 
possessed  more  virtue  "as"  such  than  money  of  a 
white  metal.  I  am  willing  to  be  charged  with  the 
some  ignorance  as  that  confessed  by  the  Honorable 
•Mr.  Gibbs.  Just  here  it  might  be  remarked  as  a 
fact  of  history,  that  the  demonetization  of  silver 
in  England,  occurring  three-quarters  of  a  century 
ago,  is  today  and.has  ever  been,  an  endless  source 
of  agitation  and  irritation  in  that  country,  and 
many  of  her  ablest  statesmen  and  patriots  are  now 
struggling  to  restore  silver  there  to  free  coinage. 
But  history  teaches  us  further  that  England  de- 
monetized silver  .because  she  had  become  the 
greatest  creditor  nation  on  earth.  The  world  was 
in  debt  to  her,  hence  it  may  have  been  to  her 
selfish  interest,  or  at  least  to  the  interest  of  her 
creditor  classes,  to  demonetize  silver  and  thus  mul- 
tiply the  purchasing  power  of  that  indebtedness. 
America  enjoys  no  such  distinction.  We  are  a 
nation  of  debtors,  and  far  from  fully  developed. 
So  our  reason  for  totally  demonetizing  silver — if 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


that  is  to  be  our  fate  —  must  be  a  different  one  from 
that  which  controlled  England. 

That  England  struck  a  recent  blow  at  silver  in 
her  Indian  provinces,  may  be  ascribed  to  very 
much  the  same  cause  that  brought  about  demoneti- 
zation at  home.  India  is  largely  indebted  to  the 
wealthy  classes  of  England,  and  the  former  having 
now  become  tempting  fruit,  is  being  plucked. 

The  time  was,  and  not  so  long  ago,  when  a 
helpless  debtor  could  be  imprisoned  at  the  will 
of  his  creditor.  Advancing  civilization  and  Christ- 
ianity revolted  at  this,  and  imprisoment  for  debt 
became  a  thing  of  the  past.  But  the  humane 
policy  of  the  law  toward  the  debtor  did  not  stop 
here.  The  debtor  when  exhausted  of  his  re- 
sources down  to  the  scant  necessaries  of  life, 
was  permitted  to  retain  them  against  the  ex- 
ecution of  a  creditor,  even  if  that  creditor  were 
the  state  itself.  This  order  of  things  seems 
now  to  be  suspended.  Only  those  are  loyal  now 
who,  at  the  behests  of  the  contractionists,  talk 
lustily  in  the  interest  of  the  preferred  classes,  and 
cry  aloud  for  "a  sound  currency  and  an  honest  dol- 
lar ;"  forgetting  that  the  most  dishonest,  cruel  and 
oppressive  of  all  things  is  the  dollar  which  costs  the 


28  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

debtor  a  greater  sacrifice  of  property  or  labor,  at 
any  given  time,  than  it  would  have  cost  when 
borrowed  on  promise  to  payin  future. 

If  any  proposition  is  capable  of  demonstration, 
the  power  of  this  government — independent  of  all 
others — to  control  its  decrees  in  reference  to  the 
money  provided  for  its  people,  is  demonstrated  in 
the  fact  that  the  silver  dollar  is  worth  a  gold  dollar 
for  all  purposes,  while  the  silver  comprising  the 
dollar  can  be  bought  for  60  cents.  But  wise  men 
tell  us  that  this  is  due  to  the  grovernment  promise 
and  the  redeemability  of  silver  in  gold.  The  an- 
swer to  this  ever  repeated  statement  is,  that  it  is 
utterly  false.  The  government  makes  no  promise 
when  it  coins  a  given  amount  of  silver  and  stamps 
it  as  a  dollar.  Nor  is  a  silver  dollar,  by  virtue  of 
law,  redeemable  in  a  gold  dollar.  A  silver  certifi- 
cate which  is  a  government  note  for  silver  bullion, 
is  redeemable  in  coin — gold  or  silver  at  the  option 
or  convenience  of  the  government;  but  a  silver 
dollar  is  redeemable  in  nothing.  It  stands  upon 
its  own  merits,  or  the  merits  of  the  government,  or 
both,  as  one  may  choose  to  view  it.  The  truth  is, 
the  silver  dollar  stands  today  60  cents  on  so-called 
intrinsic  value,  and  40  cents  on  the  fiat  of  the  gov- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


eminent ;  and  according  to  the  decisions  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  it  could  stand 
zero  as  to  intrinsic  value  and  a  hundred  cents  on 
the  fiat  of  the  government,  and  still  be  as  good  as 
the  gold  dollar.  Does  this  mean  that  we  should 
have  fiat  money  and  be  done  with  it?  The  free 
coinage  of  silver  no  more  means  fiat  money  than 
does  the  free  coinage  of  gold.  Every  intelligent 
person  with  honesty  will  admit  that  gold  would 
suffer  in  price  should  the  nations  of  the  earth  dis- 
card it  wholly  or  partially  as  money.  The  fact 
that  the  producer  of  silver  will,  under  a  restricted 
demand  for  his  product,  take  60  cents  for  what 
coins  into  a  dollar,  no  more  proves  that  sum  to  be  a' 
liberal  return  for  the  labor  and  capital  expended, 
than  6  cents  a  pound  for  cotton  proves  that  the 
labor  producing  it  has  been  well  rewarded  at  that 
price.  Under  unfavorable  conditions  labor  will 
accept  one  dollar  for  its  service,  where,  were  the 
conditions  more  favorable,  it  might  get  two.  No 
interest  is  paid  on  labor,  and  it  accepts  what  it 
can  get. 

Until  the  recent  movement  against  silver  in 
India,  we  heard  constantly  that  the  low  price  of 
silver  bullion  was  in  no  way  due  to  its  use  as  money  ; 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


but  when  India  demonetized  silver  it  fell  immedi- 
ately and  greatly  in  price.  It  will  continue  to  fall 
until  the  present  tide  against  it  in  this  country  is 
reversed — if  it  shall  ever  be. 

This  latter  day  clamor  about  the  intrinsic,  in- 
herent and  independent  virtue  in  and  value  of  the 
gold  dollar — which  few  ever  see  or  handle — is  as 
veritable  a  craze  (where  knavery  is  not  at  work)  as 
was  that  of  the  Crusaders,  who  went  forth  to  whip 
the  world  into  Christianity.  Why,  less  than  fifty 
years  ago  Germany  and  Austria  demonetized  gold  ! 
Later  on,  having  in  the  meantime  remonetized  gold, 
Germany  demonetized  silver,  in  order  to  render 
'more  valuable  to  herself  and  more  burdensome  to 
France  the  payment  by  the  latter  to  the  former  of 
$1,000,000,000  as  the  penalty  for  defeat  in  war. 
Yet  France,  by  reason  of  her  pursuit  of  a  more  lib- 
eral financial  policy — an  expanding  rather  than  a 
contracting  circulating  medium — advanced  and 
prospered  incomparably  more  during  the  payment 
of  this  thousand  million  of  dollars  than  Germany 
did  while  receiving  it.  Germany  lost  during  the 
fifteen  years  succeeding  her  demonetization  of  sil- 
ver 1,500,000  of  her  people  by  emigration  to  other 
countries,  while  the  people  of  France  remained  at 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  si 

home,  prosperous  and  happy. 

But  the  goldbug  says  triumphantly  that  France 
is  not  now  opening  her  mints-  to  free  coinage  of 
silver. 

France,  with  an  area  smaller  than  the  State  of 
Texas,  has  a  population  nearly  equal  to  two-thirds 
that  of  the  United  States ;  the  entire  territory  and 
all  her  resources  highly  developed,  and  nearly  two 
hundred  persons  to  the  square  mile.  The  United 
States  has  less  than  twenty-five  persons  to  the  square 
mile,  and  is  yet  undeveloped  as  to  the  larger  part 
of  its  territory.  France  has  about  fifteen  dollars  in 
silver  per  capita,  and  yet  the  monometallists  tell  us 
that  our  present  supply  of  about  half  that  amount 
would  be  increased  at  the  cost  of  America's  credit 
and  prosperity!  The  running  of  our  mints  at  full 
capacity  for  ten  years  without  interruption  would 
not  bring  our  silver  circulation  to  a  per  capita 
equal  to  that  of  France  to-day — say  nothing  of  our 
growth  in  the  meantime. 

Can  it  be  possible  that  a  continuation  of  the 
war  upon  silver,  to  its  complete  annihilation,  will 
restore  prosperity?  In  the  light  of  our  fruitful 
harvests  for  years  past,  and  our  absolute  exemption 
from  pestilence,  famine  or  war,  surely  no  argument 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


against  silver  is  furnished  by  comparing  the  present 
unhappy  condition  of  our  people  with  the  prosper- 
ous state  of  the  country  a  few  years  ago,  when  the 
war  of  extermination  began.  The  present  demor- 
alization of  all  prices,  trade,  development  and  en- 
terprise, coming  hand  in  hand  with  the  prospect  of 
dearer  money,  is  certainly  no  argument  for  the  con- 
summation of  that  prospect  into  a  reality. 

Those  who  contend  for  the  free  coinage  of  sil- 
ver are  charged  with  responsibility  for  the  present 
inactivity  of  money,  because,  as  is  alleged,  the 
country  is  threatened  with  cheap  money.  Would  a 
sane  man  hoard  money  because  he  feared  it  was 
going  to  become  cheap?  Would  he  not  rather 
hasten  to  convert  it  into  anything  and  everything 
at  present  low  prices?  The  hoarding  is  with  refer- 
ence to  no  particular  kind  of  money,  but  every 
dollar  is  held  back  alike.  No ;  money  is  hoarded 
to-day  not  so  much  because  of  the  small  quantity 
in  existence,  but  because  of  the  prospect  that  silver 
will  be  totally  dishonored  by  the  government,  and 
the  consequent  purchasing  power  of  a  dollar  will 
continue  to  increase.  Happily  there  is  no  fear  that 
the  government  will  confiscate  any  of  the  silver 
already  coined  ;  hence  every  dollar  is  worth  a  hun- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  33 

dred  cents  of  any  other  dollar.  But  it  is  sought  to 
force  the  redemption  of  all  silver  certificates  in 
gold  alone.  When  that  shall  be  accomplished  the 
bond  mill  will  be  ready  to  grind. 

Why  did  not  the  election  of  Mr.  Cleveland  in 
November,  '92,  reverse  the  current  of  disaster  and 
ruin,  if  it  be  true  that  an  encouraging  prospect  for 
the  final  overthrow  of  silver  is  a  token  of  better 
times?  Certainly  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  in 
this  broad  land  one  more  unalterably  opposed  to 
silver  than  he.  Yet  the  fact  stares  us  in  the  face, 
that  since  his  election  the  spectre  of  hard  times 
has  traveled  with  accelerated  speed  throughout  the 
land.  It  would  seem  that  stubborn  facts  should 
count  for  more  on  the  one  hand,  than  those  argu- 
ments on  the  other,  which  content  themselves  with 
denouncing  silver  as  stuff,  and  those  who  advocate 
its  coinage  as  cranks  and  Idiots. 

The  entire  silver  currency  of  this  country  is 
hardly  equal  to  the  expenses  of  the  government  for 
one  year ;  it  is  barely  three  times  the  amount  paid 
annually  by  the  government  in  the  form  of  pen- 
sions alone. 

The  platform  on  which  Mr.  Cleveland  was 
elected,  and  to  which  he  avowed  implicit  loyalty, 


34  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLL  A  R. 

declared  for  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  act,  and  de- 
nounced it  as  a  cowardly  makeshift  of  which  its 
authors  should  be  ashamed.  It  did  not  stop  there, 
but  with  equal  force  demanded  the  indiscriminate 
recognition  by  the  government  of  both  silver  and 
gold  as  money.  It  is  true  that  platforms  are  often 
contrived  to  catch  votes,  but  elections  are  only  won 
by  confidence  on  the  part  of  the  people  that  pledges 
contained  in  the  platforms  will  be  executed. 

Want  of  confidence  is  a  trite  expression  that  is 
constantly  used  to  explain  the  present  embarrass- 
ment of  the  people  ;  but  is  not  this  alleged  want  of 
confidence  rather  an  abiding  faith  that  a  dollar  in 
the  hands  of  its  owner  is  safer  unemployed  and  un- 
invested, in  the  light  of  constantly  declining  prices? 
Is  it  not,  after  all,  a  pure  matter  of  calculation  and 
business,  and  a  result  designed  from  the  beginning? 
It  cannot  be  a  want  of  confidence  in  the  silver  dol- 
lar, as  against  a  gold  or  paper  dollar.  That  sort  of 
distrust  could  only  be  expressed  in  an  effort  to  get 
rid  of  silver  dollars,  and  in  their  passing  at  a  dis- 
count as  a  medium  of  exchange.  Anything  in 
which  there  is  a  lack  of  confidence  necessarily  goes 
for  less  on  the  market  than  something  else  of  the 
same  kind  that  is  secure  against  such  distrust. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  35 

People  hadn't  confidence  in  Confederate  money ; 
as  a  result  it  was  constantly  on  the  go,  and  at  a  -dis- 
count commensurate  with  the  distrust. 

If  people  would  but  apply  more  common  sense 
to  the  question  of  a  circulating  medium,  and  less 
jargon  of  the  Henry  Clews  type,  they  would  fare 
much  better.  We  are  given  the  shadow  for  the 
substance.  All  see  and  admit  that  a  double  stand- 
ard here,  with  a  gold  standard  in  the  principal 
countries  of  Europe,  would  create  inconvenience 
and  loss  in  the  matter  of  international  banking  and 
commerce,  and  in  foreign  travel ;  but  is  the  gain 
from  this  source,  whether  great  or  small,  to  be 
counted  against  the  prosperity  of  the  American 
people  as  a  whole?  Our  foreign  commerce  is  about 
5  per  cent. ;  our  domestic  commerce  the  remaining 
95  per  cent.  Which  should  we  look  to  first?  In 
order  to  cultivate  an  animal's  tail,  we  must  culti- 
vate the  animal,  not  the  tail. 

The  genius  of  our  government  lies  in  our  defi- 
ance of  and  departure  from  the  governments  and 
customs  of  the  old  world,  and  in  the  power  to  sus- 
tain ourselves  in  that  independence.  Something 
more  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  with  a  population 
less  than  that  of  several  of  our  States  at  the  pres- 


36  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLL  A II. 

ent  day,  we  challenged  England,  whose  ways  we 
didn't  like,  and  after  vanquishing  her,  successfully 
embarked  upon  a  form  of  government  and  a  polit- 
ical system  untried  and  unknown  before.  Shall  we 
now  reverse  our  policy^  and  begin  taking  our  cues 
from  a  country  that  has  not  even  yet  repudiated 
the  divine  right  of  kings?  We  have  boasted,  from 
the  platform,  the  stage,  and  even  the  pulpit,  that 
we  are  the  greatest  nation  and  have  the  greatest 
government  on  earth.  Then  let  us  not  belie  our 
boasting.  It  is  conceded  on  all  sides  that  the  prob- 
lem would  be  solved  if  only  England  would  join 
us  in  bi-metalism.  Should  we  thus  cower  like  gen- 
tle lambs  at  the  feet  of  John  Bull? 

England  will  never  join  America  in  bi-metal- 
ism. America's  debt  alone  to  England  is  more  than 
all  the  gold  coin  of  the  world,  and  the  world's  in- 
debtedness to  England  is  about  three  times  the  gold 
coin  of  the  world.  This  debt,  when  counted  in  gold 
alone,  means  twice  as  much  property  as  when 
counted  in  gold  and  silver — the  world's  money  sup- 
ply of  the  two  metals  being  about  equal.  Can 
England  be  depended  upon  to  surrender  half  her 
spoils?  On  the  other  hand,  shall  we  surrender  to 
her  financial  dictation,  and  finally  yield  to  a  tri- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  87 

umph  over  us  which  she  was  powerless  to  accom- 
plish by  the  sword  ? 

But  the  monometalist  says  that  England  will 
not  require  all  this  debt  of  us  at  one  time  !  That 
is  true  ;  England  is' wiser  than  the  man  in  the  fable, 
who  killed  the  goose  in  order  to  get  all  the  golden 
eggs  at  once. 

Our  government  is  founded  upon  a  great  in- 
strument called  the  Constitution  ;  that  Constitution 
provides  for  the  coining  of  money  from  gold  and 
silver.  Our  debts  to  England,  to  the  world,  to  each 
other,  are  payable  undec  that  provision  of  the  Con- 
stitution. The  effort  to  pervert  it  in  this  regard 
did  not  have  its  origin  with  the  people.  And  no 
man  in  this  land  has  ever  been,  or  could  have  been, 
or  could  ever  be  elected  President  on  a  platform 
demanding  the  demonetization  of  silver. 

With  silver  remonetized,  England  would  not 
even  give  us  time  to  ask  her  what  she  is  going  to  do 
about  it,  but  would  hasten  over  here  with  some  of 
her  idle  money,  in  order  to  take  advantage  of  the 
rise  of  prices  that  would  inevitably  follow.  Eng- 
lish gold  would  come  this  way,  and  ours  would 
cease  to  go  that  way ;  for  if  the  Englishman  has 
one  characteristic  more  conspicuous  than  all  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


rest,  it  is  the  zest  with  which  he  strikes  a  market 
on  advancing  prices,  and  gets  out  of  a  market  when 
prices  are  falling. 


CHAPTER  III. 


BLESSINGS  FLOWING  FROM  THE  UNCONDI- 
TIONAL REPEAL  OF  THE  SHERMAN  LAW. 


DECEMBER,  1893. 

A  question  that  millions  of  'the  American  peo- 
ple are  now  asking,  and  asking  in  vain,  is,  What 
and  where  are  the  benefits  to  them  so  devoutly 
promised  from  the  unconditional  repeal  of  the  pur- 
chasing clause  of  the  Sherman  act?  The  word  un- 
conditional is  the  significant  one  in  the  inquiry ; 
for  all  were  agreed  that  the  law  in  question  was 
vicious.  Those  who  would  strike  down  the  last 
vestige  of  legislation  recognizing  silver  as  one  of 
the  two  metals  fit  to  furnish  the  basis  of  our  cur- 
rency, and  who  would  thus  consummate  the  war 
upon  that  metal,  were  feverishly  anxious  to  see  the 
law  go.  The  opposite  class — those  who  felt  that 
silver  possessed  every  inherent  quality  as  a  preci- 
ous metal  rendering  it  suitable  for  coinage  into 
money,  and  that  it  had  undergone  no  change  since 
the  foundation  of  our  government  making  it  unfit 
for  such  use — were  equally  anxious  to  destroy  a  law 


40  THE  FI  FT  Y-r  A'AT  DOLL  A  Jl 

which  made  of  that  metal  a  commodity,  providing 
for  its  purchase  in  a  market  artificially  created 
(that  is,  created  by  statute)  and  limited  so  as  to 
bear  down  its  price  and  debase  it,  thus  bringing  it 
into  disrepute  as  a  money  metal. 

The  history  of  the  world  perhaps  furnishes  no 
example  of  greater  ability  and  earnestness  than 
that  displayed  on  Koth  sides  of  this  question  by  our 
representatives  in  Congress,  when  the  same  was  re- 
cently before  them  for  determination.  And  while 
there  is  no  disposition  to  call  in  question  the  mo- 
tives prompting  any  of  those  representatives,  the 
fact  remains  that  the  majority  in  Congress  repre- 
sented a  minority  on  the  outside ;  for  the  issue  was 
between  that  limited  class  on  the  one  hand,  whose 
possessions  consist  in  money,  or  promises  (from 
others)  to  pay  money,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
overwhelming  majority,  whether  debtors  or  not, 
whose  commodity  in  the  business  of  life  consists 
not  in  money,  but  in  something  to  exchange  for 
money,  whether  that  something  be  labor,  merchan- 
dise, professional  skill,  or  property;  all  those,  in 
other  words,  whose  very  financial  life  depends  upon 
a  freely  circulating  medium  of  exchange,  and  who 
are  therefore  more  concerned  in  advancing  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  41 

price  of  and  demand  for  their  own  commodity. than 
in  the  increased  purchasing  power  of  the  dollar  fo'r 
which  that  commodity  is  offered  in  exchange. 

The  trouble  with  the  latter  class  has  been  their 
inability  to  see  that  high  priced  dollars  (which  they 
didn't  have)  simply  meant  a  correspondingly  low 
price  for  what  they  did  have.  They  persisted  in 
thinking  that  both  ends  of  the  see-saw  could  go  up 
at  the  same  time.  Hence  a  great  majority  of  the 
people  now  find  themselves  entrapped  with  still 
further  legislation  in  the  direction  of  a  contracting 
currency,  or  dearer  money ;  which  all  written  his- 
tory and  human  experience  have  shown  to  be'  dis- 
astrous to  the  masses,  and  beneficial  only  to  the 
few.  This  is  true,  regardless  of  what  may  justly 
and  truthfully  be  said  in  the  opposite  direction, 
against  an  inflated,  fictitious  currency. 

The  Honorable  Josiah  Patterson,  who  has  of 
late  become  the  great  Southern  apostle  in  the  cru- 

« 

sade  against  silver,  took  occasion  recently  to  say  in 
substance  (if  correctly  reported)  that  he  had  most 
earnestly  studied  the  works  of  all  the  great  authors 
on  finance,  and  with  one  accord  he  found  their  tes- 
timony to  be  that  no  greater  calamity  could  befall 
a  land  than  to  supply  its  people  with  cheap  money  ! 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


If  much  time  and  labor  were  expended  in  searching 
tiie  books  to  discover  this  patent  truth,  it  was  a 
great  pity. 

The  trouble  with  Mr.  Patterson's  conclusion  did 
not  lie  in  its  incorrectness,  but  rather  in  its  utter 
irrelevancy  and  inapplicability  to  the  situation. 
We  were  confronted  with  the  evil  of  dear  money ; 
and  to  pretend  to  face  that  evil  by  inveighing 
against  an  inflated  or  cheap  currency,  was  about  as 
logical  as  it  would  be  for  a  physician  to  treat  a 
small-pox  patient  for  a  case  of  yellow  fever,  and 
then  justify  his  folly  by  the  grave  and  solemn  state- 
ment that  no  greater  calamity  could  overtake  the 
patient  (now  expiring  from  small-pox)  than  a  well 
defined  case  of  yellow  fever. 

Some  fifteen  years  ago  fiat  money  came  near 
triumphing  in  this  country,  but  we  are  to-day  reap- 
ing the  bitter  fruits  of  a  triumph  in  the  opposite 
direction.  The  people,  failing  to  perceive  the  cun- 
ning fraud  concealed  in  the  never-ending  cry  for 
"a  sound  currency  and  an  honest  dollar,"  have  en- 
couraged legislation  which  has  placed  the  greater 
part  of  the  currency  beyond  reach,  and  thus  de- 
stroyed its  real  function  as  a  circulating  medium. 
The  currency  has  finally  become  so  "sound,"  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  43 

dollar  so  "honest,"  that  it  no  longer  seeks  labor,  to 
remunerate  it,  but  leaves  it  either  impoverished 
begging  or  starving ;  it-  no  longer  hunts  investment 
and  development,  but  is  content,  for  the  time  be- 
ing, to  remain  inactive,  feeding  upon  its  own  in- 
creasing strength  and  power. 

It  is  not  strange  that  Wall  street,  and  all  others 
who  take  their  inspiration  from  that  source,  should, 
far  more  reasons  than  one,  be  averse  to  silver,  per 
se;  because,  first,  if  the  currency  of  the  country 
were  more  largely  silver  money,  the  banks  would 
be  less  able  to  control  that  currency.  Silver  is  not 
the  character  of  money  that  constitutes  the  larger 
per  cent,  of  bank  deposits — and  profits  to  a  bank 
come  from  its  deposits,  not  its  capital  stock.  Second, 
silver  constitutes  an  unhandy  sort  of  currency  for 
the  large  transactions  which  make  banking  profita- 
ble. Imagine  a  Wall  street  transaction,  involving 
a  hundred  thousand  or  five  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars (more  money  than  the  average  man  earns  in  a 
lifetime),  being  conducted  in  silver  dollars!  In 
the  immediate  business  of  banking,  silver  is  only 
desirable  for  purposes  of  making  change.  That  a 
greater  volume  of  silver  currency  would  interfere 
with  the  profits  and  power  of  the  great  banking  in- 


44  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

stitutions  of  the  country  may  be  true.  Their  oppo- 
sition to  silver,  then,  is  natural,  and  an  undisputed 
privilege.  But  it  is  equally  clear  that  the  people 
have  made  a  mistake  in  supposing  that  their  inter- 
ests on  this  question  were  identical  with  those  of 
the  banks,  whose  voice  and  lead  the  majority  were 
content  to  follow  in  the  recent  financial  controversy, 
resulting  in  the  recent  financial  legislation.  This 
error  was  facilitated,  too,  in  the  fact  that  the  one 
individual  who  possessed  greatest  power  in  the 
matter,  Mr.  Cleveland,  has  found  it  impossible  ever 
to  contemplate  the  situation  from  any  other  view- 
point than  Wall  street. 

New  York  City  was  headquarters  for  the  ruth- 
less war  successfully  waged  for  a  contracted  (now 
a  congested)  currency;  and  why  should  there  not 
be  at  this  time  in  that  city  alone  near  one  hundred 
millions  of  idle  dollars?  Idle  money  in  the  hands 
of  a  comparative  few,  is  the  logical  and  universal 
result  of  contraction,  or  legislation  promising  con- 
traction ;  and  the  present  financial  congestion  is 
the  legitimate  spoils  of  a  battle  fought  for  that 
purpose. 

The  idle  money  of  the  country  will  keep, 
whether  gold,  silver  or  paper.  In  due  season  it 


THE  FIFTY-CEXT  DOLLAR. 


will  reach  out  for  its  prey,  and  further  concentrate 
into  the  hands  of  a  few  the  rightful  wealth  of  the 
many.  There  is  no  pressing  occasion  for  that 
money  to  move  just  now,  in  the  face  of  prices  still 
pursuing  their  even  tenor  downwards.  Why  invest 
a  given  sum  to-day  for  wrhat  may  be  bought  for  less 
to-morrow? 

On  the  part  of  ^hose  now  hoarding  money,  it 
is,  after  all,  a  pure  matter  of  business  calculation, 
and  not  want  of  confidence,  about  which  we  hear  so 
much.  Want  of  confidence  in  what?  Is  human 
nature  less  worthy  of  trust  than  it  once  was?  Is 
the  idle,  suffering  labor  of  the  land  less  willing  or 
less  capable  than  formerly?  Have  the  mines  and 
fields  and  forests  ceased  to.  yield  their  wonted 
abundance?  No;  there  was  never  more  confidence 
than  that  now  felt  by  the  few  who  hold  the  purse- 
strings,  and  who  will  eventually  reap  unrighteous 
gains  from  the  present  straits  of  the  majority,  if 
we  are  not  soon  to  have  a  change  of  financial  policy. 
In  the  meantime,  the  ruin  already  wrought  can 
hardly  be  repaired.  No  natural  law  can  avert  the 
evil,  which  is  in  the  very  teeth  of  the  greatest 
abundance  of  everything  wherewith  to  be  fed, 
clothed  and  sheltered. 


46  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

When  a  great  number  of  the  people  are  in 
distress  in  the  midst  of  plenty,  it  is  human  laws 
that  are  at  fault,  and  not  natural  laws.  If  this  be 
untrue,  let  the  phenomenon  be  explained  by  the 
doctrinaires  who  are  now  leading  the  people  and 
carrying  the  day,  with  their  fine  teaching  onparity, 
and  ratio,  and  single  standard. 

In  view  of  the  immediate  adverse  results  from 
the  recent  financial  legislation,  there  can  be  no 
ground  from  which  to  defend  it ;  and  it  would  seem 
that  there  can  be  no  longer  room  for  argument  by 
which  to  deceive  on  this  question. 

We  have  all  heard  the  old  adage  that  actions 
speak  louder  than  words  ;  so  do  results  speak  louder 
than  theories.  We,  are  fast  discovering  that  the 
secret  of  idle  millions  of  money  now  in  the  metro- 
politan banks  of  the  country,  lies  in  the  unwise  and 
unjust  premium  put  upon  money  by  legislation.  And 
when  Henry  Clews  now  recommends  to  the  Ameri- 
can people  methods  by  which  to  get  rid  of  some  of 
our  gold,  "in  order  to  reduce  the  unhealthy  surplus 
of  money"  (in  New  York  City),  he  insults  their  in- 
telligence and  mocks  their  distress. 

The  people  have  but  to  read  and  observe,  in 
order  to  see  that  the  character  of  legislation  which 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  47 

promised  relief  has  not  brought  it.  They  are 
rapidly  learning — what  Senator  Sherman  substan- 
tially admitted  in  his  last  argument  in  the  Senate 
on  this  question — that  free  coinage  of  silver  would 
cheapen  the  gold  dollar  and  silver  dollar  alike. 
They  both  now  occupy  the  same  heights ;  and]no 
one  pretends  to  fear  that  the  gold  dollar  will  ever 
become  too  cheap.  To  prevent  its  growing  dearer 
should  be  the  effort  of  the  American  people. 

Let  us  do,  then,  what  Senator  Sherman  did  not 
want  done — cheapen  both  the  gold  dollar  and  the 
silver  dollar  alike,  by  putting  them  on  the  same 
plane  before  the  law. 

The  argument  that  free  coinage  of  silver  will 
tend  to  drive  our  gold  to  Europe  and  bring  silver 
back  in  its  stead,  has  lost  its  force,  since  the  past 
year's  experience  has  shown  that  it  is  of  little  con- 
sequence whether  gold  is  disposed  toward  Europe 
or  from  Europe  this  way.  Nor  can  the  people,  by 
having  China  and  Mexico  held  up  to  them  as  silver 
standard  governments,  be  again  frightened  into  the 
belief  that  we  would  somehow  be  transformed  into 
Chinamen  or  Mexicans,  should  we  adopt  a  more 
liberal  policy  toward  silver  money.  We  are  begin- 
ning to  realize  now  that  China  and  Mexico  are  what 


48  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

they  are  by  reason  of  their  environments,  and  not 
on  account  of  the  color  or  any  other  quality  of  their 
money.  If  dear  money  is  the  desideratum,  surely 
that  end  is  attained  with  silver  In  China,  for  a  sil- 
ver dollar  there  will  buy  more  human  labor  and 
sacrifice  than  a  gold  dollar  can  purchase  in  any 
other  country  of  the  world.  It  is  being  seen  and 
realized  now,  that  gold,  so  serenely  called  the  money 
of  the  world,  constituting  only  about  $2.50  per 
capita  of  the  world's  inhabitants,  can  no  more  stand 
sponsor  for  all  other  needed  forms  of  money,  than 
a  bank  can  stand  a  run  from  its  depositors  when 
there  is  but  a  small  per  cent,  of  its  deposits  on  hand 
with  which  to  pay.  It  is  being  fast  discovered  that 
the  function  of  government,  with  reference  to  its 
money,  is  to  coin  it,  as  far  as  it  is  possible,  rather 
than  to  issue  paper  or  silver  promises  to  pay  in 
gold,  which  it  does  not  possess,  and  cannot  procure 
in  sufficient  quantity  to  redeem  its  pledges — except 
by  borrowing  from  Shylocks  on  interest  bearing  bonds. 
The  people,  from  sad  experience,  are  beginning 
to  believe  that  Mr.  Carlisle,  the  present  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  told  the  truth  when  he  said  some 
years  ago,  that  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  this 
country  would  mean  more  ruin  and  wreck  than  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  49 

destruction  by  fire  of  half  the  combustible  property 
of  the  land,  including  the  ships  at  sea;  and  Mr. 
Carlisle's  present  course  is  not  ascribed  to  increased 
wisdom  or  statesmanship  on  his  part,  nor  to  any 
change  in  silver  money,  but  to  a  remarkable  change 
in  himself. 

Mr.  Cleveland,  during  his  former  administra- 
tion, took  o'ccasion  to  say,  concerning  the  tariff,  that 
we  were  confronted  with  a  condition  and  not  a 
theory.  Those  ominous  words  of  the  President, 
spoken  at  a  time  when  the  condition  was  not  par- 
ticularly grave,  would  have  been  much  more  fitly 
spoken  concerning  the  financial  question,  in  his  last 
message  to  Congress. 

He  is  now  giving  himself  wholly  to  theory,  and 
not  to  the  condition.  In  the  meantime,  all  his 
theories  going  to  show  that  this  country's  welfare 
is  advanced  by  legislation  unfriendly  to  silver,  have 
utterly  failed  us. 

A  theory  unsupported  by  facts  or  results,  is  a 
delusion  and  a  snare. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE   PEOPLE   NOW   THINKING   FOR  THEM- 
SELVES. 


MAKCH,  1895. 

Not  until  the  masses  of  the  American  people 
began  to  think  for  fhemselves,  did  the  "campaign 
of  education"  really  set  in  on  the  tariff  question ; 
when  it  was  learned  that  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
they  had  been  falsely  persuaded  that  the  whole 
people  were  being  enriched  by  a  system  which 
levied  a  general  tax  upon  consumption  for  the  ben- 
efit of  particular  classes.  In  like  manner,  the  peo- 
ple are  now  beginning  to  think  for  themselves  on 
the  financial  question,  and  have  at  last  grown  suspi- 
cious of  the  persistent,  systematic,  and  apparently 
organized,  teaching  on  this  question ;  which  seems 
only  to  have  furnished  theories  at  the  expense  of 
disastrous  facts. 

Every  observing  person  in  this  country  knows 
that  the  hard  times  through  which  a  majority  of 
the  people  are  now  passing,  began  with  the  crusade 
against  silver,  following  the  enactment  of  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  51 

Sherman  law  in  1890.  It  is  further  apparent  that 
the  situation  has  grown  steadily  worse  since  the  late 
financial  war  began  ;  on  the  one  hand,  to  force  upon 
the  government  a  gold  standard  as  its  fixed  finan- 
cial policy,  and  on  the  other,  to  re-establish  the 
free  coinage  of  silver.  It  is  an  historical  fact,  also, 
that  our  national  legislation,  during  the  period 
mentioned,  has  all  been  adverse  to  silver,  and  in 
the  direction  of  a  gold  standard.  While  the  pur- 
chasing clause  of  the  Sherman  act  was  rightfully 
repealed,  nothing  was  enacted  in  its  stead  providing 
for  the  further  use  of  silver.  The  subsequent  effort 
to  coin  the  seigniorage  in  the  treasury  ended  in 
failure.  And  along  with  this  legislation  there  was 
established  the  precedent  of  paying  out  gold  alone, 
instead  of  gold  and  silver  indiscriminately,  in  tak- 
ing up  the  government's  paper  promises  offered  for 
redemption. 

The  foregoing  are  facts  of  recent  history,  which 
will  not  be  denied,  however  plausible  and  satisfac- 
tory to  some  may  still  be  the  theories  upon  which 
are  built  the  arguments  against  silver  and  in  favor 
of  a  gold  standard. 

Monometallists  were  assuring  the  country  about 
two  years  ago  that  general  prosperity  would  be  at 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


once  restored  by  the  unconditional  repeal  of  the 
then  remaining  legislation  recognizing  silver  as  a 
partial  basis  for  our  currency.  Still  trusting  the 
sources  whence  this  fight  upon  silver  emanated,  this 
prescription  was  taken,  and  the  last  act  necessary 
to  place  our  financial  system  upon  a  gold  basis  was 
accomplished.  But,  despite  the  disastrous  results 
from  what  has  been  done,  the  specious  arguments 
against  silver,  and  in  defense  of  the  present  sys- 
tem, are  as  cunningly  put  forward  as  ever  before. 
We  are  yet  told  that  it  is  impossible  to  have  two 
yard-sticks  of  different  lengths,  though  the  perpe- 
trators of  this  stale  verbal  trick  fail  to  state  the 
equally  self-evident  proposition,  that  we  can  have 
two  yard-sticks  of  different  materials.  We  hear 
no  end  of  the  "fifty  cent"  silver  dollar,  while  we  all 
know  that  for  the  purpose  of  its  existence  it  is 
worth  a  gold  dollar,  and  that  its  procurement  costs 
a  greater  sacrifice  of  toil  or  property  than  ever  be- 
fore in  the  history  of  this  country;  hundreds  of 
thousands  being  scarcely  able  now  to  sell  their 
labor  at  any  price. 

While  (for  manifest  reasons  under  the  present 
system)  our  gold  is  constantly  going  out  of  the 
treasury  and  out  of  the  country,  yet  the  cause  of 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  53 

this  is  impudently  denied,  and  the  argument  still 
made  that  the  very  opposite  .  conditions,  such  as 
would  prevail  under  free  coinage  of  silver,  would 
drive  our  gold  away.  We  hear  it  over  and  over 
again,  that  free  coinage  would  at  most  only  benefit 
the  miners  of  silver  bullion  ;  and  unthinking  per- 
sons accept  this  as  true,  forgetting  that  the  same 
argument  would  prove  that  the  government  should 
never  have  had  a  dollar  of  circulating  medium 
coined  from  gold  or  silver,  because,  forsooth,  no- 
body was  benefitted  thereby  but  those  furnishing 
the  bullion  !  It  is  an  argument  made  with  an  air 
of  confidence  and  sincerity,  which,  if  reduced  to 
practice  in  the  past,  would  have  left  us  to  the 
primitive  barter  system — the  first  thing  abandoned 
by  civilization  and  government ;  all  history  teach- 
ing that  the  greater  the  volume  of  circulating  me- 
dium, the  greater  the  enterprise,  activity  and  pros- 
perity, along  with  a  more  equable  distribution  of 
wealth  among  all  the  people. 

China  and  other  countries,  that  have  too  little 
silver,  and  no  gold  at  all,  are  yet  held  up  as  scare- 
crows, though  with  just  the  same  propriety  and 
logic  could  Turkey  and  Liberia  be  cited  by  the  ad- 
vocates of  silver  as  fit  examples  of  gold  standard 
countries. 


54  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

Even  the  laboring  man  is  now  told  that  he,  too, 
belongs  to  the  creditor  class — because  he  does  not 
ask  for  his  pay  in  advance  of  the  work  done  for  it ! 
This  mocking  of  the  idle,  hungry  labor  of  the  land 
is  like  offering  him  a  drug  that  he  may  forget  his 
misery,  only  to  have  it  return  upon  him  magnified, 
when  the  narcotic  has  spent  its  force.  And  more, 
every  man  who  is  trying  to  guard  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren against  future  want,  through  the  medium  of 
an  insurance  policy,  is  being  reminded  of  his  re- 
cent elevation  to  that  charmed  circle  known  as  the 
creditor  class.  Before  these  new  recruits  begin  to 
regale  themselves,  they  should  go  to  the  coffers  of 
life  insurance  companies  in  this  country  and  count 
the  ill-gotten  millions  that  have  been  paid  into 
them  on  policies  surrendered  during  the  past  five 

JZ'1~' 

years  for  she*e  lack  of  the  means  to  pay  the  annual 
premium.  After  such  investigation,  the  insured  in 
this  country  would  at  most  only  regard  their  new 
honors  as  empty  ones. 

The  arguments  alluded  to,  along  with  many  like 
ones,  are  put  with  the  skill  of  a  clairvoyant,  and  re- 
peated along  the  line.  The  average  man  is  power- 
less to  meet  them  in  kind,  but  some  things  he  does 
know  and  understand.  He  knows  that  in  the  midst 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


of  plenty  he  is  in  distress,  or  at  least  that  millions 
of  his  fellows  are.  He  knows  that  this  distress  has 
come  with  legislation  hostile  to  silver ;  and  he 
knows  that  the  relief  so  devoutly  promised  him  has 
never  come. 

Money  is  not,  under  civilized  governments, 
what  it  was  in  the  days  of  Abraham — a  certain 
weight  of  gold  or  silver,  or  other  substance.  Neither 
gold  nor  silver  is  money  except  by  government 
authority.  Where  the  two  metals  do  not  exist  in 
sufficient  quantity  to  supply  the  demand  for  a  cir- 
culating medium  (and  they  have  never  so  existed 
in  this  country)  government  promises  are  necessary, 
in  the  form  of  paper  money  to  be  redeemed  in  coin. 
All  will  admit  that  the  government  should,  as  far 
as  possible,  avoid  these  promises,  whether  direct, 
through  treasury  notes,  or  indirect,  in  the  form  of 
legalized  bank  issues,  for  which  the  government 
stands  responsible.  It  makes  no  such  promise  in 
coining  gold  or  silver ;  though  it  is  constantly 
stated  falsely  that  the  value  of  a  silver  dollar  is 
only  maintained  by  virtue  of  its  redeemability  in 
gold.  There  has  never  been  a  law  of  this  land  that 
pledged  the  government  to  redeem  silver  dollars 
with  gold  dollars.  The  exchangeability  of  the  two 


56  THE  FIFTY-CEXT  DOLLAR. 

metals  as  money  is  conventional,  and  not  legisla- 
tive. With  free  coinage  of  silver,  therefore,  the 
government  would  be  under  no  pledges  on  account 
of  its  currency,  except  as  to  the  paper  promises  re- 
ferred to ;  and  such  promises  would  be  supported 
by  both  silver  and  gold. 

Individual  financiering  proves  disastrous  where 
obligations  are  needlessly  multiplied,  with  the 
means  to  meet  them  growing  more  and  more  lim- 
ited. But  monometallists  have  succeeded  in  forcing 
just  such  policy  upon  our  government.  The  Con- 
stitution provides  for  the  coining  of  money  from 
gold  and  silver,  and  not  for  unnecessary  government 
promises,  which  might  prove  difficult,  if  not  impos- 
sible, to  meet. 

Gold  standard  advocates  have  about  succeeded 
in  turning  the  government  into  a  great  banking  in- 
stitution (for  designing  millionaires  to  prey  upon)  ; 
yet  those  who  have  resisted  such  government  policy 
are  denounced  as  being  opposed  to  "a  sound  cur- 
rency and  an  honest  dollar."  These  immaculate 
advocates  for  "honest  money"  have  forced  the  pres- 
ent plan  of  attempting,  with  a  hundred  millions  of 

gold,  to  perform  the  impossible  task  of  redeeming 

i 
about   a    thousand   millions   of    paper   and   silver 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  57 

promises.  Of  course  the  well-understood  and  only 
escape  for  the  treasury,  at  every  run  upon  it  under 
these  conditions,  is  the  selling  of  bonds  for  gold, 
with  which  to  replenish  this  inadequate  gold  re- 
serve ;  an  absurd  spectacle  being  at  the  same  time 
presented,  in  the  treasury^  furnishing  gold  with 
which  to  replenish  itself — blood  extracted  from  the 
body,  to  be  taken  into  the  stomach  as  a  strengthener  ! 
It  is  true,  the  average  man  does  not,  and  would 
not,  engage  in  runs  upon  the  public  treasury.  On 
acquiring  dollars,  of  whatever  kind,  he  is  content, 
so  long  as  he  knows  that  each  one  will  buy  a  dol- 
lar's worth  in  support  of  himself  or  family  ;  and  it 
is  of  no  consequence  to  him  whether  or  not  such 
dollars  could  be  exchanged  for  gold  dollars  (having 
no  greater  purchasing  power)  at  the  government 
treasury.  But  there  are  those  who  sagaciously  de- 
sire the  investment  of  their  surplus  millions  in 
United  States  bonds.  Such  security  is  not  taxable  ; 
it  is  a  mortgage  upon  all  the  property  and  toil  of 
the  land,  arid  is  a  constantly  increasing  source  of 
wealth,  as  the  purchasing  power  of  each  dollar 
called  for  increases.  It  is  not  difficult,  therefore,  to 
understand  wrhy  this  class  would  engraft  upon  our 
government  a  system  whereby  the  repeated  issu- 


58  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

ance  of  United  States  bonds  is  made  a  necessity  at 
their  will ;  though  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why 
others,  not  so  interested,  could  have  encouraged 
such  a  system. 

Our  money,  as  a  medium  of  exchange,  whether 
gold,  silver  or  paper,  is  the  creature  of  government, 
in  the  sense  that  it  must  be  given  legal  tender 
quality  by  the  government.  Having  assumed, 
therefore,  to  provide  and  control  our  circulating 
medium,  the  government  is  necessarily  under  obli- 
gation to  do  nothing  tending  to  disturb  its  function 
as  such  circulating  medium.  That  function  is  dis- 
turbed, however,  and  wholly  or  partially  destroyed 
the  moment  legislation  is  enacted,  or  promised, 
which  contemplates  a  contracting  currency ;  for  the 
holders  of  money,  at  such  times,  withdraw  it  from 
circulation  in  order  to  reap  the  benefits  of  the 
promised  contraction — every  dollar  being  thereby 
augmented  in  purchasing  power.  Thus,  by  con- 
traction, the  free  circulation  of  money  (upon 
which  all  prosperity  depends)  is  arrested,  and  cor- 
responding paralysis  is  the  result. 

Many  persons  unwittingly  join  in  the  demand 
for  dearer  money  (money  being  what  they  are  seek- 
ing, rather  than  what  they  possess)  without  realiz- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  59 

ing  that  the  process  of  making  it  dearer  (increas- 
ing its  purchasing  power)  puts  it  further  beyond 
their  reach,  and  lessens,  or  destroys  altogether,  the 
demand  for  what  they  have  to  offer  for  money, 
whether  labor,  professional  skill  or  property.  If 
every  one  could  continue  to  acquire  his  accustomed 
income  of  dollars,  under  a  system  that  constantly 
demanded  and  assured  an  increase  in  their  pur- 
chasing power,  certainly  nothing  would  be  more  ad- 
vantageous than  to  systematically  increase  that 
purchasing  power.  But,  in  the  very  nature  of 
things,  this  process  results  in  cutting  off  the  supply 
of  money  from  those  who  are  without  it,  and  whose 
means  of  living  consists  in  something  else  that'is 
offered  in  exchange  for  money. 

Contraction,  or  legislation  and  agitation  in  that 
direction,  simply  encourage  an  inactive  currency, 
which,  to  the  extent  that  it  exists,  is  the  destruction 
of  money  as  a  circulating  medium— rendering  it  an 
unjust  and  ruinous  source  of  wealth  to  the  holder, 
while  remaining  in  a  state  of  inactivity.  Happily 
the  influence  of  such  agitation  is  waning,  and  the 
folly  of  such  legislation  is  becoming  apparent; 
hence  returning  prosperity  is  in  sight- 
Manifestly  there  are  two  limited  classes  who 


60  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

are  benefitted  by  such  financial  policy  as  has  been 
furnished  the  country  in  recent  years  ;  first,  those 
whose  possessions  consist  wholly  or  chiefly  in  money, 
or  its  equivalent  in  guaranteed  securities  ;  second, 
those  who  enjoy  certain  incomes,  fixed  by  law  or 
otherwise.  These  two  classes  taken  together,  while 
comparatively  few  in  number,  constitute  a  very 
large  part  of  the  wealth  and  intelligence  of  the 
country  ;  and  naturally  their  position  and  influence, 
on  this  vital  question,  have  been  on  the  side  of  self- 
interest.  And  the  masses  have  blindly  followed 
them,  mistaking  selfishness  for  political  wisdom  and 
patriotism. 

Those  who  have  advocated  false  and  deceptive 
doctrine  on  this  question,  now  join  most  lustily 
in  deprecating  present  conditions,  and,  as  an  ex- 
planation therefor,  are  pleased  to  advance  every 
theory — except  their  own  folly  or  knavery.  They 
defy  the  simple  laws  of  cause  and  effect,  and  say 
that  the  trouble  results  from  what  others  wanted 
done,  but  not  from  what  was  actually  done  by  their 
procurement.  They  know,  or  by  this  time  should 
know,  that  the  inactivity  of  money,  with  all  its 
evil  consequences,  is  the  logical,  certain  and  con- 
tinuing result  of  legislation  tending  to  reduce  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  61 

supply,  however  adequate  the  existing  supply  might 
be.  This  fact  is  nothing  new.  All  history  teaches 
it,  and  it  was  certainly  well  known  to  the  originat- 
ors of  the  movement  to  crush  out  silver  money; 
whatever  may  be  said  of  many  who  have  followed, 
aiding  and  abetting,  with  nothing  to  gain  and  all  to 
lose  thereby.  And,  to-day,  this  country,  by  reason 
of  vicious  financial  legislation,  is  confronted  with 
a  spectacle  without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  to-wit,  millions  of  idle  money  in  the  hands 
of  a  comparative  few,  general  business  paralysis, 
the  balance  of  trade  against  us  and  a  national 
treasury  powerless  to  meet  its  obligations,  the  en- 
forced bankruptcy  of  hundreds  of  thousands  who 
lack  neither  capacity  nor.  will,  and  other  hundreds 
of  thousands  holding  their  hands  in  helpless  idle- 
ness and  want.  These  conditions  cannot  be  ascribed 
to  natural  causes.  Nature  has  graciously  con- 
tributed to  prosperity — has  done  her  utmost  to 
avert  the  ruin.  Present  conditions  are  the  un- 
erring result  of  causes  purely  artificial  and  designed. 
Those  of  the  Henry  Clews  type  still  tell  us 
that  ulack  of  confidence"  is  the  trouble ;  as  if  this 
vague,  meaningless  phrase  accounted  for  some 
great  moral  revolution  in  the  laws  governing  human 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


motives  and  actions.  How  the  country  will  rejoice 
when  this  class  shall  conclude  that  the  wandering 
prodigal,  "Confidence,"  should  return  home  !  It 
will  begin  to  return  whenever  the  people  of  the 
country  become  fully  alive  to  the  secret  of  their 
trouble  and  its  source. 

Others  say  economy  is  the  remedy,  when  never 
before  was  there  so  much  compulsory  economy  as 
has  for  four  years  past  been  practiced  by  a  great 
majority  of  the  people.  Economy  (doing  without) 
will  enrich  one  man,  if  those  around  him  are  buy- 
ing and  enjoying  what  this  one  produces ;  but  the 
economy  of  all,  whether  voluntary  or  involuntary, 
simply  means  each  one's  doing  without  something 
which  the  others  have  to  sell,  while  the  possessions 
of  all  shrink  or  perish  on  their  hands.  When  every 
one  has  satiated  himself  upon  what  is  his  own,  he 
can  go  no  further ;  and  each  suffers  for  want  of 
what  the  other  possesses.  We  see  this  every  day 
around  us.  It  is  a  condition  forced  by  the  absence, 
or  inactivity  of  a  circulating  medium.  Economy, 
therefore,  which  is  offered  as  the  remedy,  is  really 
a  result  of  the  trouble. 

In  like  manner  over-production  is  said  to  be  the 
cause  of  the  difficulty,  when  it,  too,  is  simply  a  re- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


suit.  There  can  only  be  over-production  when  a 
portion  of  the  supply  is  not  wanted.  Is  it  correct 
to  say  that  there  is  over-production  of  cotton,  so 
long  as  any  number  of  human  beings  are  insuffi- 
ciently clothed,  and  are  in  vain  offering  their  toil 
in  order  to  secure  that  clothing?  With  cotton  goods 
needed  and  labor  idle,  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
over-production  of  cotton. 

Again,  is  it  fair  to  say  that  there  is  over  pro- 
duction of  wheat,  with  hungry  men,  women  and 
children  in  the  very  shadow  of  the  elevators  asking 
for  work  ?  That  is  the  condition  in  Chicago  to-day. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  insufficiently  fed,  and  wheat 
over-produced ! 

It  is  a  sad  commentary  upon  law  and  civiliza- 
tion, when  any  considerable  number  of  capable  and 
willing  persons  are  in  distress  on  account  of  super- 
abundance of  the  wherewith  to  relieve  that  distress. 
Man  in  a  state  of  nature,  freed  from  the  environ- 
ment of  government,  would  never  suffer  from  such 
difficulty. 

The  truth  of  the  whole  matter  is  this :  Indi- 
viduals began  to  hoard  money  because  they  were 
promised  legislation  tending  to  make  their  money 
dearer.  They  did  with  their  money  just  what  one 


64  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

would  do  with  his  cotton  or  wheat  or  other  thing 
that  promised  a  higher  price  in  future.  The  hoard- 
ing of  money  produced  stagnation  and  started 
prices  downward.  Thus,  hoarding  became  more 
and  more  profitable ;  it  has  fed  and  fattened  upon 
itself. 

Were  the  irredeemable  silver  dollar  the  cause 
of  the  trouble,  as  the  people  have  been  urged  to 
believe,  it  would  have  been  let  go,  and  would  long 
since  have  lost  its  parity  with  the  gold  dollar.  But 
the  silver  dollar  is  as  devoutly  held  by  its  detract- 
ors as  the  gold  dollar.  And  now  the  country  is  im- 
pudently reminded  that  none  of  the  silver  hereto- 
fore coined  has  been  denied  its  legal  tender  qual- 
ity, that  there  is  as  much  money  in  the  country  as 
ever  before  ;  so  why  complain?  This  is  like  saying 
the  patient  should  not  have  died,  because  his  dead 
body  had  lost  none  of  its  blood.  But  the  body 
ceases  to  live  when  the  blood  ceases. to  circulate. 

Suppose,  for  illustration,  a  separate  and  inde- 
pendent community,  composed,  say,  of  1,000  per- 
sons. Now,  under  the  census  of  1890,  the  average 
wealth  of  the  people  of  this  country  was  about 
$1,000  per  capita,  and  the  proportion  of  property  to 
money  about  forty  to  one.  According  to  these 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  65 

figures  the  aggregate  wealth  of  the  community  in 
question  would  be  $1,000,000  ;  and  the  total  amount 
of  money  in  circulation  would  be  but  $25,000.  This 
sum  would  represent  all  the  commerce,  all  the  de- 
velopment, and  all  the  prosperity  of  that  com- 
munity. Suppose  further,  that  one  person  in  the 
community,  richer  than  the  average  member,  was 
worth  $25,000  or  more,  and  should  convert  his  en- 
tire property  into  money — thus  absorbing  for  the 
time  being  all  the  money  in  circulation.  There 
would  be  no  actual  contraction  of  the  currency  in 
that  case,  but  it  is  needless  to  say  that  withholding 
from  circulation  or  reinvestment  the  money  thus 
in  hand,  would  mean  suspension  of  all  forms  of 
business  and  development,  and  would  result  in  cer- 
tain bankruptcy  to  all  but  this  one  person.  It  may 
be  said  that  in  pursuing  the  course  suggested,  he 
would  be  but  exercising  an  indisputable  privilege. 
Unquestionably  so;  but  any  legislation  on  behalf 
of  that  community,  tending  to  encourage  such 
course,  would  be  nothing  less  than  criminal.  Yet, 
under  the  pretense  of  maintaining  for  the  people 
"a  sound  currency,"  we  have  had  just  such  legisla- 
tion by  the  American  government,  with  like  result. 
And  now,  after  our  mad  war  upon  silver  money, 


66  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

and  the  stupendous  sacrifice  that  has  been  made  in 
the  name  of  "honest  money,"  we  find  English  cap- 
italists clamoring  for  our  government  bonds  at 
about  3  per  cent,  interest,  and  payable  thirty  years 
from  now — in  silver,  if  we  choose. 

Legislation  is  unjust  that  would  inflate,  or  un- 
duly increase,  the  curreney,  and  thus  disturb  cred- 
its or  lessen  the  value  of  investments  that  are  to 
be  returned  in  fixed  sums  of  money.  But  a  thou- 
sand fold  more  unjust,  and  infinitely  more  disas- 
trous, is  legislation  that  seeks  or  tends  to  contract 
the  currency  and  increase  the  purchasing  power  of 
a  dollar ;  which  simply  means  to  magnify  the 
shadow,  and  minimize  and  destroy  the  substance. 
It  means  a  currency  always  tending  to  inaction,  the 
constant  depression  of  values,  the  demoralization 
of  commerce,  the  suspension  of  enterprise  and  de- 
velopment, the  multiplying  of  idleness,  and  final 
disaster  to  an  overwhelming  majority  of  the  people. 

Under  our  blighting  financial  policy  and  sys- 
tem during  the  past  few  years,  it  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  American  investments,  constantly 
falling  in  price,  should  have  been  returned  to  us 
from  abroad,  and  gold  demanded  in  their  stead. 
The  foreign  investor  is  not  singular  in  wanting  his 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  67 

money  out  of  an  investment  that  has  ceased  to  pay. 
He  is  not  afraid,  however,  of  our  bonds,  which 
guarantee  a  fixed  return  of  our  money,  whether 
gold  or  silver.  We  have  yet  to  hear  of  our  bonds 
returning  to  us. 

Gold  was  not  denied  an  equal  showing  with 
silver  in  this  country,  when  it  was  being  produced 
more  rapidly  than  ever  silver  has  been  produced 
since ;  and  there  was  no  trouble  then  about  the 
market  value  of  gold  bullion,  because  its  coinage 
was  allowed  to  remain  free,  and  its  value  was  then, 
as  now,  determined  by  law. 

Ordinary  intelligence,  and  all  experience,  teach 
that  the  market  value  of  a  metal  that  is  largely  used 
for  purposes  of  money,  is  influenced,  either  favor- 
ably or  unfavorably,  by  legislation.  While  this  is 
strangely  denied  by  some  as  to  gold,  it  is  equally 
strange  that  the  same  persons  admit  its  truth  as  to 
silver,  and  agree  that  coining  silver  would  increase 
the  price  of  silver  bullion.  Indeed,  this  fact  as  to 
silver  is  not  only  admitted  by  monometallists,  but 
it  has  been  most  successfully  used  to  prejudice  the 
cause  of  silver,  by  the  charge  that  free  coinage  of 
silver  would  enrich  Ihe  silver  miners  of  the  West 
(increase  the  value  of  their  bullion)  and  benefit  no 


68  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

body  else,  but  rather  work  injury  to  the  people  as  a 
whole,  equal  to  the  benefit  conferred  upon  producers 
of  silver.  We  have  been  taught  that  the  govern- 
ment would,  in  some  way, pay  out  something  to  the 
silver  miners  (by  coining  silver,  giving  it  legal  ten- 
der quality,  and  turning  it  loose),  just  as  it  pays 
money  to  pensioners ;  and  it  is  constantly  asserted 
that  bi-metallists  would  add  "silver  pensioners" 
to  the  list  of  those  receiving  government-bounty. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  proposition,  that  free 
coinage  of  silver  would  inceease  the  price  of  silver 
bullion.  But  its  coinage  value  is  100  cents  now, 
with  its  bullion  value  about  50  cents.  Will  the  sil- 
ver dollar,  then,  become  less  valuable,  as  compared 
with  the  gold  dollar,  on  increasing  the  value  of  the 
metal  from  which  the  silver  dollar  is  coined?  That 
is  to  say,  if  50  cents  worth  of  silver  now  makes  a 
good  dollar,  will  60  cents  worth,  or  75  cents  worth, 
or  95  cents  worth,  make  a  bad  dollar? 

According  to  the  gold  standard  advocates,  the 
silver  dollar  is  50  cents  fiat,  and  50  cents  money. 
Instead  of  condemning  it,  therefore,  why  should 
they  not  say,  "Hurrah  for  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment, and  its  fiat!"  No!  they  would  sooner 
erect  a  golden  calf  at  once  and  bow  down  before  it. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  69 

Since,  however,  the  fiat  in  the  silver  dollar  is 
the  chief  ground  of  attack  upon  it  from  monometal- 
lists,  why  is  it  not  their  aim  to  destroy  this  fiat 
element,  as  far  as  possible,  by  increasing  the  value 
of  silver  bullion?  Their  aim  is  rather  to  wipe  out 
silver  forever,  and  give  gold  supreme  control ;  for 
that  would  reduce  the  power  over  the  currency  to  a 
closer  corporation. 

After  restoring  silver,  there  will  be  time  enough 
to  demonetize  it,  whenever  it  begins  to  drive  some  of 
our  idolized  gold  away,  and  develops  incapacity  to 
perform  the  function  of  money,  on  a  parity  with  the 
gold  dollar  at  a  fixed  ratio.  It  is  maintaining  that 
function  now,  despite  all  the  legislation  and  manip- 
ulation to  the  contrary.  Will  it  cease  to  do  so  under 
more  friendly  legislation? 

All  compromises  with  the  enemies  of  silver  have 
proven  snares  and  worse  than  failures.  The  course 
of  other  leading  nations,  as  to  the  two  metals,  can 
no  longer  b*e  made  our  excuse,  for  they  are  now  (at 
least  their  masses  are)  holding  out  their  hands  and 
asking,  after  a  more  protracted  experience  with 
monometallism  than  ours  has  been,  to  be  restored 
to  bi-metallism.  But,  unfortunately  for  the  other 
countries,  the  masses  there  have  not  the  same  power 


70  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

that  they  have  here; 

It  was  not  because  of  the  real  or  supposed  dis- 
parity of  silver  with  gold,  at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1, 
that  its  extermination  was  sought  in  this  country ; 
for  no  other  greater  ratio  has  ever  been  demanded. 
The  simple  purpose  was  to  contract  the  currency  to 
a  gold  basis,  and  silver  was  the  necessary  object  of 
attack. 

In  1834,  when  the  ratio  between  the  two  metals 
of  15  to  1  was  deemed  inadequate,  the  demoneti- 
zation of  silver  was  not  resorted  to  as  the  remedy. 
The  menacing  and  sordid  influence,  known  as  the 
money  power,  which  has  since  grown  up  in  this 
country,  did  not  then  exist,  to  dictate,  and  almost 
to  control  the  financial  legislation  and  operations  of 
our  government.  The  course  pursued  at  the  time 
referred  to  was  to  readjust  the  ratio,  making  it  16 
to  1,  and  that,  too,  by  decreasing  the  gold  dollar,  and 
leaving  the  silver  dollar  unchanged.  Such  readjust- 
ment as  this,  whether  fair  or  unfair,  was  never  pro- 
posed by  the  advocates  of  silver  in  the  struggle  of 
1893.  They  have  never  asked  that  the  gold  dollar 
be  reduced.  And  in  the  conflict  referred  to,  in  or- 
der to  prevent  the  complete  overthrow  of  silver,  its 
friends  were  content,  if  need  be,  to  increase  the  sil- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  71 

ver  dollar ;  but  this,  for  manifest  reasons,  was 
equally  obnoxious  to  the  contractionists.  Their 
purpose  was  not  to  cure  any  supposed  disparity,  but 

to  destroy. 

***** 

What  precedes  in  this  volume  is  an  effort  to 
point  out  some  of  the  financial  evils  of  a  contracting 
currency.  The  moral  evils  from  such  source  are 
greater.  But  a  discussion  of  that  question  is  waived 
with  the  single  query,  however,  while  passing:  Are 
crime,  vice,  immorality  and  poverty  on  the  wane,  or 
on  the  increase  in  this  beloved  land  of  ours?  and 
are  they  likely  to  diminish  under  a  financial  system 
that  means  perpetual  contraction? 

* 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  repeat  here  what  has 
often  been  quoted  from  the  British  historian,  Sir 
Archibald  Alison,  who  says  :  "The  downfall  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  so  long  ascribed,  in  ignorance,  to 
slavery,  heathenism  and  moral  corruption,  was  in 
reality  brought  about  by  a  decline  in  the  silver  and 
gold  mines  of  Spain  and  Greece."  In  other  words, 
slavery,  heathenism  and  moral  corruption  were  not 
the  cause,  but  the  result  of  a  cause  that  went  before. 
Contraction  did  there  what  it  is  doing,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  do,  here :  it  swept  away  the  prosperous 


72  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

A 

middle  classes,  and  amassed  the  wealth  into  a  few 
hands.  It  multiplied  poverty.  And  whatever  im- 
mense wealth  may  do  for  those  possessing  it,  we  all 
know  and  admit  that  extreme  poverty  brings  vice 
and  crime. 

We  as  a  nation  are  no  more  secure  than  Rome 
once  thought  herself,  and  appeared  to  be ;  yet  we 
•  are  deliberately  doing  with  our  currency  what  Rome 
was  powerless  to  prevent  as  to  hers. 

That  which  worked  Rome's  death  (a  contract- 
ing currency)  is  now  prescribed  to  us  as  a  remedy. 
Shall  we  take  the  medicine  trustingly,  or  shall  we 
call  in  another  physician? 


REPLY  TO  CRITICS. 


Desiring  to  elaborate  certain  statements  con- 
tained in  the  foregoing  chapters,  and  to  meet  in  ad- 
vance, as  far  as  possible,  criticisms  that  are  appre- 
hended, the  method  adopted  for  the  purpose  is  the 
following  questions  and  answers;  the  liberty  being 
allowed  the  supposed  interrogator  to  put  his  ques- 
tions in  that  form  usually  resorted  to  by  the  quib- 
bler  to  pervert  meaning. 

Question. — It  is  stated  that  a  government's 
money  is  as  good  as  that  government,  whatever  that 
money  may  be  made  of.  Is  not  that  a  very  hazard- 
ous proposition? 

Answer. — The  government  in  mind  was  that  of 
the  United  States  ;  that  one  in  which  the  American 
people  are  most  concerned — thus  far  the  best  gov- 
ernment, with  the  greatest  people,  in  the  world. 
If  the  statement  was  in  any  sense  an  error,  there- 
fore, it  was  in  the  direction  of  patriotism  and  not 
treason. 

What  was  particularly  meant  is  this  :  Money 
of  the  United  States,  in  the  United  States,  is  as 


74  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

good,  and  will  always  be  as  good,  when  made  of 
silver  as  when  made  of  gold. 

Q. — You  say,  "in  the  United  States  ;"  but  sup- 
pose we  were  in  England,  say,  with  our  money; 
which  would  be  the  better,  gold  or  silver? 

A. — That  meaningless  question  is  often  put  be- 
cause of  the  confusion  it  creates.  Before  proceed- 
ing  to  discuss  it,  however,  we  should  at  least  bear 
in  mind  that  very  few  of  our  people  use  the  United 
States  for  sleeping  quarters,  while  they  do  business 
in  England  during  the  day.  Few,  indeed,  enjoy 
even  one  trip  abroad  during  a  lifetime. 

We  have  been  taught  to  view  our  financial 
affairs  too  much  from  a  foreign  standpoint.  For 
instance,  only  a  brief  while  ago  Mr.  Cleveland, 
writing  to  certain  parties  in  Chicago,  said  the  fol- 
lowing, among  other  things,  in  favor  of  a  gold 
standard  in  this  country :  "If  the  American  peo- 
ple were  only  concerned  in  the  maintenance  of 
their  physical  life  among  themselves,  they  might 
return  to  the  old  days  of  barter."  That  is  to  say, 
were  it  not  for  our  foreign  relations  (involving 
about  5  per  cent,  of  our  commerce)  it  would  be  a 
small  matter  to  take  care  of  the  remaining  95  per 
cent.,  and  the  same  could  be  conducted  on  the  bar- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


ter  system.  This  remarkable  statement  of  the 
President  is  in  line  with  the  teaching  the  people  of 
this  country  have  been  receiving  during  the  past 
few  years.  They  are  fast  growing  weary  of  it ;  and 
are  rebelling  at  present  conditions,  which  tend  very 
much  toward  "the  old  days  of  barter,"  for  lack  of 
an  active  circulating  medium. 

But  to  return  to  the  question  :  In  the  first  place, 
our  silver  dollars  and  gold  dollars  would  not  be 
money  in  England  at  all,  but  would  be  bullion — for 
which  very  reason  the  enemies  of  silver,  if  consist- 
ent, should  be  doing  everything  possible  to  advance 
the  price  of  silver  bullion,  instead  of  running  it 
down.  In  the  second  place,  we  would  not  be  in 
England,  or  any  other  civilized  foreign  country, 
with  American  dollars  of  any  kind.  We  would  go 
with  letters  of  credit,  giving  us  the  right  to  draw 
money  from  a  bank  of  the  foreign  country,  which 
right  would  be  acquired  by  depositing  money  in  a 
bank  here  ;  and  the  banks  would  afterwards  settle 
the  matter  between  themselves. 

Q. — Then  suppose  the  settlement  between  the 
banks  should  require  the  remittance  of  either  gold 
or  silver  to  the  foreign  bank? 

A. — That  would  be  a  matter  of  no  concern  to 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


UP,  since  our  silver  dollars  here  would  buy  the  right 
to  just  as  much  money  in  the  foreign  country  as 
gold  dollars  would  buy.  But  say  it  would  not,  then 
all  those,  particularly  the  bankers,  who  are  so  much 
concerned  about  foreign  countries  on  this  money 
question,  should  be  equally  concerned  to  increase 
the  value  of  silver  bullion. 

As  to  the  value  of  our  silver  dollars  with  for- 
eigners, the  recent  experience  of  this  country,  in 
the  last  issue  of  bonds,  ought  to  be  a  sufficient  les- 
son. Mr.  Cleveland,  in  a  trade  with  foreigners, 
made  a  distinction  in  favor  of  gold,  to  the  extent  of 
about  sixteen  millions  of  dollars  to  be  finally  paid 
on  sixty-two  and  a  half  millions  of  bonds.  After 
Congress  had  properly  refused  to  recognize  this 
distinction  by  law,  the  bonds  at  once  sold — second 
hand — for  just  as  much  when  payable  in  silver  or 
gold,  as  if  payable  exclusively  in  gold. 

It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  the 
men  who  bought  those  bonds  hoped  to  see,  before 
their  maturity,  silver  wiped  out  in  this  country  for- 
ever. And  it  is  for  the  struggle  that  is  now  on  to 
determine  that  question — a  question  for  the  future, 
whether  remote  or  near,  which  means  liberty  and 
prosperity  on  the  one  hand,  or  financial  bondage 
and  ruin  on  the  other. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


Q. — But  would  not  the  free  coinage  of  silver 
cause  the  silver  of  other  countries  to  be  "dumped" 
upon  us? 

A. — Of  all  the  sophistries  that  have  been  used 
to  mislead  and  deceive  on  this  question,  that  one  is 
the  most  consummate,  because  the  most  plausible 
on  its  face. 

Labor,  whether  in  this  country  or  in  Europe,  is 
paid  in  silver,  not  in  gold.  Take  from  England, 
France  or  Germany  the  silver  that  is  daily  used 
there  now,  and  labor  could  not  be  paid — their  fac- 
tories and  engines  would  stop.  We  had  an  object 
lesson  of  this  kind  here  in  1893.  At  the  very  time 
when  the  papers  of  New  York  City  were  ablaze 
with  their  fusillade  upon  the  "cheap  silver  dollar," 
the  people  of  tljat  city  took  fright  and  withdrew 
their  silver  from  circulation,  causing  untold 
distress  to  business ;  and  for  a  while  silver  dollars 
were  selling  at  more  than  a  100  cents,  in  order  to 
meet  the  imperative  demands  of  commerce.  Mr. 
Chauncey  Depew  came  near  having  to  close  up  shop 
with  his  great  railroad,  for  lack  of  the  silver  with 
which  to  pay  employes — a  plight  which  was  doubt- 
less humiliating  to  the  brilliant  defamer  of  the 
"fifty-cent  dollar." 


78  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

Something  amusing  in  connection  with  the 
period  referred  to,  is  the  fact  that  bankers  and 
monometallists  are  wont  to  refer  to  it  as  the 
"panic ;"  as  if  it  represented  the  only  period  of 
hard  times  that  they  have  visited  upon  this  country 
since  1890.  It  was  certainly  trying  times  for  the 
banks,  but  the  people  had  been  suffering  before, 
and  they  have  continued  to  suffer  since. 

Q. — But  you  are  trying  to  side-track  this  dump- 
ing business.  Now,  instead  of  bringing  their  silver 
coin,  suppose  foreign  countries  should  bring  over 
their  silver  bullion  and  have  it  coined? 

A. — What  would  they  do  with  it  otherwise  than 
invest  it  in  this  country  ?  Remember,  this  govern- 
ment would  not  coin  silver  into  foreign  dollars. 
Besides,  the  foreigner  might  have  »to  wait  quite  a 
while  before  getting  his  silver  coined  even  into  our 
dollars.  The  surplus  silver — so-called  seigniorage 
— now  in  the  treasury  would  alone  require  the  full 
capacity  of  all  our  mints  for  about  four  years,  and 
the  government  might  very  well  determine  to  coin 
that  first. 

Q. — But,  would  foreigners  not  bring  their  bul- 
lion over  and  sell  it  for  our  gold  dollars,  and  thus 
reduce  us  to  silver  monometallism? 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  79 

A. — If  silver  bullion  should  advance  in  price 
here,  it  would  advance  abroad  ;  and  there  would  be 
no  necessity  for  bringing  it  over  here  to  sell — it 
could  be  sold  at  home. 

Q. — Would  not  the  cost  of  transportation,  how- 
ever, make  a  difference  in  favor  of  the  price  in  this 
country? 

A. — Then  it  would  be  sold  abroad  in  order  to 
save  transportation. 

Let  it  be  admitted,  however,  that  foreigners 
would  bring  silver  bullion  to  this  country  and  sell 
it  for  our  gold.  We  would  in  turn  take  our  silver 
bullion  to  them,  and  sell  it  for  their  gold.  (We  are 
doing  it  now.)  And  that  is  a  game  at  which- we 
would  beat  them  dreadfully ;  for  America  would 
produce  more  silver  than  all  the  world  besides. 
We  would  have  vastly  more  to  spare  than  any  other 
country  ;  and  silver  is  always  needed  for  other  pur- 
poses than  money.  We  would  thus,  by  free  coin- 
age, constantly  replenish  our  supply  of  silver  money, 
and  at  the  same  time  add  to  our  gold  supply. 

In  the  meantime  our  wheat  and  cotton  (the 
two  great  products  of  this  country  on  which  the 
foreigner  is  largely  dependent)  would  advance  in 
price.  We  raise  a  large  surplus  of  both,  and  their 


80  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

prices  are  controlled  in  foreign  markets,  where  a 
given  amount  (weight)  of  silver  will  buy  a  given 
amount  of  wheat  or  cotton.  The  more  we  increase 
the  price  of  that  silver,  therefore,  the  more  we  in- 
crease the  price  of  the  cotton  or  wheat  exchanged 
for  it.  As  proof  of  this,  we  find  that  cotton  and 
wheat  have  declined  in  price  just  about  as  silver 
bullion  has  declined  since  1873,  at  which  time  sil- 
ver bullion  was  at  a  premium  over  gold  bullion. 
The  temporary  relations,  from  time  to  time,  be- 
tween the  supply  of  and  demand  for  the  commodi- 
ties named,  have  of  course  prevented  anything  like 
uniformity  in  the  decline  mentioned.  But,  to  make 
use 'of  the  variations  to  defeat  the  argument  drawn 
from  the  general  fact,  is  as  unfair  and  unsound  as 
it  would  be  to  select  a  brief  period — embracing  an 
epidemic  or  an  unusually  healthful  season — by 
which  to  determine  the  normal  death  rate  of  a  com- 
munity. Yet  gold  papers  are  constantly  using  just 
such  methods  to  destroy  the  argument  referred  to. 
Even  Professor  J.  Lawrence  Laughlin,  who  has 
recently  become  the  Moses  to  deliver  the  mono- 
metallists  from  their  enemies,  in  attacking  the 
wheat  and  cotton  argument,  brings  forward  the 
startling  evidence  that  corn,  oats  and  pork  each  re- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  81 

mained  about  uniform  in  price  from  1873  to  1894. 
He  makes  four  rows  of  figures  ;  three  to  represent 
the  commodities  named,  and  one  to  represent  sil- 
ver, and  shows  that  the  prices  of  these  farm  pro- 
ducts kept  up  to  a  substantial  level  during  the  years 
mentioned,  while  silver  bullion  was  all  the  time 
falling.  The  proof  is  convincing,  but  unfortunately 
for  the  Professor,  he  forgot  that  he  was  demonstrat- 
ing precisely  what  the  silver  advocate  would  prove, 
to-wit,  that  those  farm  products  (cotton  and  wheat) 
whose  prices  are  controlled  abroad,  have  fallen  with 
silver  bullion,  while  those  products  of  the  Ameri- 
can farm  (corn,  oats  and  pork)  whose  prices  are 
not  controlled  abroad,  have  not  been  influenced  by 
the  falling  price  of  silver  bullion.  The  Professor 
illustrates  not  so  much  his  own  weakness,  as  the 
weakness  of  his  cause,  when  the  light  is  turned  on. 
The  same  authority  steps  forward  from  day  to  day, 
in  the  Chicago  Times-Herald,  panoplied  and 
shielded,  Goliath  like,  to  annihilate  "Coin,"  the 
little  David  who  has  recently  given  so  much  trouble 
to  the  Philistines.  But  the  observer  will  see  that, 
instead  of  harming  David  or  his  cause,  Goliath  is 
constantly  piercing  himself  by  an  unskillful  use  of 
his  own  weapons.  For  example,  he  announces  such 


82  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

truths  as  the  following,  which  no  silver  advocate 
^  would  think  of  denying :  "Money  is  only  the  ma- 
chinery by  which  goods  are  exchanged  against  one 
another.  It  is  only  a  means  to  an  end.  It  bears 
the  same  relation  to  goods  that  a  railway  or  a  bridge 
does."  Then,  forgetting  himself  and  his  cause,  he 
proceeds,  with  all  the  ingenuity  of  his  cultured 
mind,  to  advocate  and  defend  a  system  which 
destroys  a  part  of  that  machinery ;  which  renders 
ineffectual  a  portion  of  the  means  to  the  end ; 
which  would  burn  a  part  of  that  railway  or  bridge. 
Mr.  Laughlin,  in  order  to  demonstrate  the  necessity 
for  fewer  dollars,  says :  "There  is  no  need  for  a 
separate  gold  dollar  (he  rather  ignores  any  other 
sort  of  dollar)  for  every  bit  of  goods  (property)  in 
the  country,  each  worth  a  dollar."  He  should 
know,  however,  that  there  is  now  less  than  one  such 
dollar  for  every  hundred  "bits"  of  goods ;  or  at 
least  that  such  was  the  case  under  the  census  of 
1890,  before  goods  began  their  rapid  decline  under 
the  system  which  he  champions. 

The  farmers  of  the  West  and  South,  together 
with  the  vast  business  interests  dependent  upon 
those  farmers,  may  well  whet  their  swords  for  a 
battle  to  lift  wheat  from  fifty  cents  a  bushel,  and 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


cotton  from  five  cents  a  pound  to  the  producer 
of  each.  Victory  is  within  their  grasp,  if 
they  will  but  unite  for  its  achievement.  Al- 
ready Henry  Clews,  the  mouth-piece  of  Eastern 
monometallism,  is  blowing  a  bugle  blast,  declaring 
better  times  coming ;  telling  the  people  at  the  same 
time,  however,  to  keep  quiej,  on  the  silver  question, 
lest  "Confidence"  may  take  fright  again,  and  return 
to  its  hole.  But  the  South  and  West  are  returning 
a  long,  loud  blast,  which  says  that  the  rift  in  the 
cloud  is  the  result  of  the  people's  agitation  of  the 
silver  question ;  that  there  was  no  break  in  the 
cloud  until  the  recent  agitation  began,  and  that 
when  this  agitation  ends  in  the  triumph  of  the  sil- 
ver cause,  we  will  once  more  be  under  a  clear  sky 
and  upon  a  smooth  sea. 

Restoration  of  normal  prices  to  wheat  and  cot- 
ton, with  the  renewed  life  and  activity  which  would 
follow,  would  create  an  immense  balance  of  trade 
in  favor  of  the  United  States — and  it  is  the  balance 
of  trade  against  a  country  that  bleeds  it  of  its  gold 
or  any  other  form  of  money  that  is  dearer  (as  a 
commodity)  in  some  other  country.  To  preserve 
our  gold,  we  must  preserve  the  balance  of  trade. 
To  preserve  the  balance  of  trade,  we  must  not  con- 


84  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

tract  the  currency,  and  thereby  encourage  inactiv- 
ity. Monometallists  insist  upon  maintaining  our 
gold  standard  as  the  only  means  to  avoid  losing  our 
gold.  Yet  during  the  ten  months  preceding  May 
15, 1895,  the  exports  of  gold  from  this  country  were 
sixty-four  millions  of  dollars,  against  imports 
amounting  to  thirty-six  millions — difference  against 
this  country,  twenty-eight  millions  ;  being  nearly 
three  millions  a  mouth,  or  ninety-three  thousand 
dollars  a  day  going  out  at  last  accounts. 

Q. — So  much  is  said  about  contraction.  Why 
is  this,  since  the  government  has  not  reduced  the 
volume  of  currency  by  a  single  dollar? 

A. — Suppose  the  people  of  a  neighborhood  were 
well  supplied  with  wheat,  and  had  on  hand  a  fair 
supply  of  bread  from  this  cereal  as  well.  Then 
suppose  the  miller  of  that  neighborhood,  on  whom 
the  neighbors  were  dependent,  should  decree  one 
or  the  other  of  two  things  ;  either  to  destroy  all  the 
wheat  bread  on  hand,  or  to  grind  no  more  flour  from 
wheat.  Which  would  be  worse  for  that  community  ? 
It  is  manifest  that  the  latter  would  be  infinitely 
worse  ;  for,  in  that  event,  the  temporary  supply  of 
wheat  bread  would  have  to  suffice  for  all  time  to 
come.  On  the  other  hand,  merely  to  destroy  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  85 

existing  supply  of  wheat  bread  would  only  produce 
temporary  straits  until  more  wheat  might  be 
ground.  The  government  has  not  destroyed  any  of 
the  existing  supply  of  silver  money  (by  denying  it 
legal  tender  quality),  but  it  is  doing  as  bad  or 
worse,  in  declaring  against  the  coining  of  silver  in 
the  future.  We  hear  no  promise  in  behalf  of  silver 
from  those  who  secured  existing  legislation.  And 
we  are  to-day  without  any  law  by  which  to  replen- 
ish our  future  money  supply  with  silver.  While 
the  present  supply  is  being  worn  out  and  destroyed, 
we  are  increasing  in  population  at  the  rate  of  more 
than  a  million  souls  a  year. 

With  the  silver  supply  being  reduced,  popula- 
tion increasing,  and  gold  constantly  going  out  of 
the  country,  is  it  difficult  to  perceive  the  quiet,  eat- 
ing process  of  contraction  that  has  been  provided 
for  our  once  active,  prospering  and  developing 
country? 

Q. — When  the  term  free  coinage  is  used,  is  it 
meant  that  the  government  should  coin  silver  and 
not  charge  seigniorage  or  mintage? 

A. — Let  us  go  back  to  the  miller  again.  If  he 
should  stop  grinding  wheat,  and  Defuse  ever  to 
grind  any  more,  there  wrould  be  mutiny  among  the 


86  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

neighbors.  But  there  would  need  be  no  trouble, 
and  certainly  no  ground  for  complaint,  should  the 
miller  resume  the  grinding  of  wheat  on  a  charge  of 
toll  equal  to  the  labor  and  expense  of  running  the 
mill. 

Q. — Should  the  government  give  100  cents  for 
50  cents  worth  of  silver,  and  thus  enrich  the  silver 
miners  of  the  West? 

A.- — A  man,  insane  with  jealousy,  once  de- 
stroyed his  own  eyesight  and  hearing,  that  he  might 
not  see  and  hear  the  triumphal  display  given  in 
honor  of  a  rival.  It  is  just  such  insanity  as  this 
that  makes  the  point  against  silver  that  it  would 
benefit  the  silver  miner 

But  to  return  to  the  question  :  The  govern- 
ment should  give  neither  100  cents  nor  one  cent  for 
silver.  Nothing  was  further  from  the  minds  of 
those  who  made  the  Constitution,  than  that  the 
government  treasury  should  become  a  warehouse 
for  the  buying  and  storing  of  silver  bullion.  The 
government  should  coin  silver  as  the  Constitution 
provides. 

Q. — At  what  ratio  ? 

A. — In  the  light  of  our  past  experience  16  to  1 
would  be  a  fair  ratio.  As  before  stated,  the  silver 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  87 

bullion  in  a  dollar  was  worth  more  than  the  gold 
bullion  in  a  dollar  when  silver  was  demonetized  in 
1873. 

Q. — But  has  there  not  been  a  great  deal  more 
silver  than  gold  produced  since  that  time? 

A. — In  the  United  States  there  has  been  ;  but 
in  the  entire  world,  including  the  United  States, 
only  about  8  per  cent,  more  of  silver  than  gold  has 
been  produced  since  1873,  estimated  at  their  coined 
values. 

Q. — Can  we  have  two  standards  of  value? 

A. — It  is  possible. 

Q.— How  ? 

A. — By  having  a  gold  or  silver  dollar  at  a  pre- 
mium ;  thus  giving  us  one. dollar  worth  more  than 
a  hundred  cents  of  the  other.  Silver  advocates  do 
not  think  that  the  government,  in  proper  hands, 
would  ever  be  responsible  for  such  thing  as  that ; 
nor  do  they  fear  that  the  people  at  large  will  bring 
about  such  condition  of  things,  in  their  use  of  the 
two  metals  as  money.  But  under  our  present  laws 
and  financial  management,  such  thing  may  well  be 
feared  from  money-mongers  who  have  it  in  their 
power  to  corner  not  only  the  gold  coin  of  the  coun- 
try, but  the  gold  bullion  as  well.  Only  a  short 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


while  ago  (May  8,  1895,)  the  newspapers  of  the 
country  stated  that  the  Rothschilds  and  their 
American  allies  were  paying  more  for  gold  bullion, 
in  order  to  keep  it  from  our  mints,  than  the  same 
gold  is  worth  for  coining  into  dollars. 

Q. — Might  they  not  corner  the  silver  too? 

A. — If  so,  then  we  should  increase  the  difficulty 
on  them.  For  example,  when  Russell  Sage,  some 
months  ago,  was  making  way  with  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  in  gold  to  deposit  vaults,  in  order 
to  remove  it  from  circulation,  the  difficulty  and  in- 
convenience of  such  a  performance  would  have 
been  greatly  increased  had  the  sum  been  twice  that 
amount,  and  the  other  half  been  in  silver  dollars. 

Q. — What  is  our  unit  of  value? 

A. — There  now  !  If  one  will  consult  the  coinage 
laws  of  the  country  he  will  find  that  the  first 
statute,  under  the  Constitution,  providing  for  coin- 
ing money  from  gold  and  silver,  was  passed  in  1792, 
wherein  it  was  enacted  that  a  certain  quantity  of 
gold  should  be  coined  into  "dollars  or  units;"  also 
that  a  certain  quantity  of  silver  should  be  coined 
into  "dollars  or  units"  The  word  "units"  in  each 
case  is  convertible  with  the  word  "dollars,"  without 
reference  to  the  number  of  grains,  either  of  gold 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  89 

or  silver,  necessary  to  make  a  dollar.  The  unit  is 
the  dollar.  But,  if  it  is  the  number  of  grains  in 
the  dollar  that  should  constitute  the  unit,  then  371i 
grains  of  pure  silver  should  be  that  unit;  for  it 
took  that  to  make  a  dollar  in  1792,  and  it  has  never 
been  changed,  whether  silver  bullion  was  above  or 
below  par.  All  the  subsequent  confusion  as  to  the 

* 

unit  of  value  has  crept  into  this  subject  by  abuse 
of  the  first  simple  language  employed. 

Q. — Did  not  the  Act  of  1873,  however,  provide 
that  the  gold  dollar,  "at  the  standard  weight  of 
25i8o  grains,  shall  be  the  unit  of  value?" 

A. — It  did,  indeed,  and  did  more :  It  demon- 
etized the  silver  dollar.  Members  of  Congress  who 
voted  for  the  law  were  as  ignorant  of  the  one  pro- 
vision as  of  the  other.  And  it  took  the  two  to 
make  the  foundation  for  all  the  financial  trouble 
that  has  followed. 

Q.-»-In  answer  to  the  first  question,  is  it  inti- 
mated that  advocacy  of  the  gold  standard  in  this 
country  is  treason? 

A. — There  are  millions  of  patriots  in  this  coun- 
try who  are  on  that^side  from  conviction.  There 
are  some  who  take  that  side  for  craven  or  selfish 
reasons,  regardless  of  convictions.  There  is  still 
7 


90  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

another  class,  who,  in  order  to  accomplish  their  dia- 
bolical purposes,  have  not  scrupled,  and  will  not 
scruple,  to  embarrass  the  government  and  distress 
the  people.  The  latter  class  are  traitors. 

Q. — If,  as  so  many  earnestly  insist,  the  silver 
side  of  this  question  is  right,  and  for  the  best  inter- 
est of  this  country  as  a  whole,  how  does  it  happen 
that  monometallists  call  themselves  "sound  money" 
men,  and  "honest  money"  men,  and  designate  their 
newspapers  and  clubs  and  conventions  accordingly? 

A. — There  can  be  but  one  explanation  for  that. 
It  is  simply  monumental  arrogance  and  impudence, 
equal  to  anything  in  that  line  of  which  His  Satanic 
Majesty  was  ever  guilty.  Such  terms  might  be  ex- 
pected from  the  hirelings  who  do  their  miserable 
bidding  for  so  much  a  week ;  but  they  disgrace 
those  who,  dealing  with  the  question  as  patriotic 
American  citizens,  assume  that  dishonesty  of  mind 
and  purpose  controls  those  who  differ  witft  them, 
whether  right  or  wrong. 

Q. — During  the  quarter  of  a  century  preceding 
1873,  gold  to  the  extent  of  about  seven  hundred 
millions  of  dollars  was  produced  and  coined  in  this 
country,  and  only  a  small  amount  of  silver  was  pro- 
duced during  the  same  time ;  and  this  was  a  period 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLL  A  P.  91 

of  great  prosperity.  Was  it  not  due  to  the  small 
quantity  of  silver? 

A. — That  is  the  peculiar  argument  of  the  mono- 
metallist ;  but  the  bi-metallist  rather  thinks  this 
prosperity  was  due  to  the  large  supply  of  money 
added  to  our  currency. 

Q. — But  was  not  gold  then  considered  the  bet- 
ter money  throughout  the  world  ? 

A. — No;  at  the  beginning  of  that  very  period 
gold  became  "stuff"  with  the  lofty  people  of 
Germany  and  Austria,  and  was  demonetized  by 
those  two  governments.  England  might  have  done 
the  same  thing,  had  not  selfishness  previously 
struck  out  there  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  se- 
cured the  demonetization  of  silver.  Indeed  it  was 
more  pardonable  for  Germany  and  Austria  to  de- 
monetize gold  than  for  England  to  demonetize 
silver ;  for  if  the  world  had  to  do  without  either  as 
money,  it  could  infinitely  better  spare  gold  than 
silver.  Gold  is  the  better  money  for  large  transac- 
tions. But,  for  that  limitless,  ceaseless  commerce 
which  gives  employment  and  life  to  the  great  work- 
ing masses,  guaranteeing  general  prosperity  and 
distributed  wealth,  silver  is  incomparably  the  bet- 
ter money. 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


Q. — Is  not  the  fact  that  silver  is  an  unwieldy 
sort  of  metal,  the  secret  of  the  people's  prejudice 
against  it? 

A. — The  secret  mentioned  is  like  many  other 
slanders ;  it  has  no  existence  in  fact.  The  masses 
are  not  prejudiced  against  silver,  and  they  joyously 
handle  it  when  opportunity  presents,  while  gold  is 
seldom  seen  or  handled  at  all.  The  banks  and  the 
rich  are  prejudiced  against  silver.  It  is  a  little 
bulky  for  their  business.  They  express  their  preju- 
dice for  that  of  the  people  at  large,  and  others 

• 

sometimes  ape  them. 

Q. — Are  there  not  millions  of  silver  dollars 
now  in  the  national  treasury  which  the  people  will 
not  use? 

A. — By  no  means.  That  is  money  the  people 
cannot  use.  Silver  certificates  are  out  against  it. 
The  government  cannot  pay  it  out  twice ;  if  so,  it 
might  keep  up  with  current  expenses,  which  it  has 
been  unable  to  do  under  our  gold  standard  system. 
The  silver  in  the  treasury  is  simply  accounted  for 
by  the  fact  that  it  represents  silver  certificates, 
issued  under  laws  providing  for  the  purchase  of 
silver  bullion,  instead  of  coining  it.  Those  who  go 
to  the  treasury  to  exchange  paper  money  for  coin, » 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  93 

do  not  want  gold  any  more  than  they  want  silver, 
except  for  the  purpose  of  looting  the  government 
of  bonds,  by  running  down  the  gold  reserve.  The 
masses,  who  have  no  such  evil  designs," are  content 
with  whatever  money  falls  into  their  hands,  without 
going  to  the  treasury  to  exchange  it  for  some  other 
form  of  money. 

Q. — If  we  should  make  money  out  of  silver, 
why  not  make  it  of  pig  iron,  and  give  it  legal  ten- 
der quality? 

A. — That  taunting  suggestion,  so  often  made 
by  mone-metallists,  besides  being  peurile,  is  a 
bastard  offspring — born  of  a  spirit  of  insubordina- 
tion to  law.  There  is  no  authority  for  making 
money  of  pig  iron.  And  the  man  who  suggests  it, 
as  a  means  of  ridiculing  any  money  recognized  by 
the  constitution,  would  not  hesitate  to  trample  that 
constitution  under  his  feet. 

Q. — Why  is  it  stated  that  bankers  are  not  safe 
leaders  of  thought  on  the  financial  question  ? 

A. — There  is  nothing  new  in  that  idea.  It  is  as 
old  as  civilization. ' 

Bankers  are  money  changers,  non-producers — 
the  absorbers  of  wealth,  not  the  creators  of  it — 
manipulators  of  dollars ;  hence  can  only  see  pros- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


perity  (to  themselves)  in  increasing  the  purchasing 
power  of  each  dollar.     Not  being  the  producers  of 
anything,  they  naturally  want  each  dollar  to  pur- 
chase the  greatest  amount  possible  of  what  is  pro- 
duced by  others.     In  the  meantime,  the  producers 
on  the  outside  are  equally  interested  in  pushing 
their  products — whether  of  brain  or  muscle — and 
in  trying  to  keep  the  dollar  from  rising.      There  is 
a  natural  rivalry,  therefore,  between  the  bankers 
and  the  producing  classes.      The  banker'earns  his 
profits  largely  from  money  put  into  his  hands  by 
others,  who  usually  receive  no  interest  for  the  use 
of  that  money.     If  interest  is  paid  by  the  banker, 
more  interest  is  charged.    His  earnings  are  in  dol- 
lars, not  in  property.    The   more   property   these 
dollars  will  absorb,  therefore,  the  greater  his  gain?. 
The  banker's  prejudice  against  silver,  in  favor 
of  gold  or  paper,  is  easily  accounted  for.     A  given 
sum  of  money  can  be  counted  in  $20  gold  pieces 
just   twenty   times   as  fast  as  it  can  possibly  be 
counted  in  silver.     Silver  is  a  cumbersome  sort  of 
money  with  which  to  settle  balances  between  banks, 
even  in  the  same  city  or  community.     Wealthy  de- 
positors (on  whom  the  banker  most  depends)  want 
gold  or  paper  on  their  checks,  and  not  silver.   They 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  95 

would  soon  remove  their  deposits  from  a  bank  that 
would  offer  them  large  sums  in  silver.  Gold  usually 
finds  its  way  to  the  banks,  and  is  little  handled  by 
the  people  at  large,  while  silver  is  in  constant  use, 
and  in  the  hands  of  the  people.  Added  to  all  this 
is  the  fact  that  national  banks  derive  their  life  and 
existence  from  United  States  bonds. 

For  the  foregoing  reasons,  it  is  manifestly 
natural  that  the  banker  should  see  profit  to  himself 
in  contraction  on  the  one  hand,  and  in  the  exter- 
mination of  silver  on  the  other. 

Bankers,  as  a  class,  are  the  equal  of  any  other 
profession  or  calling  in  sagacity,  and  if  the  pros- 
perity of  an  entire  people  could  be  identical  in 
every  particular  with  the  prosperity  of  the  banker, 
it  would  be  entirely  safe  to  follow  him.  That  there 
is,  however,  one  interest  in  common  between  bank- 
ers and  the  producing  classes  on  the  outside,  there 
can  be  no  question  ;  and  this  the  banker  persists  in 
not  seeing,  to-wit :  When  enterprise  and  develop- 
ment, through  contraction,  have  been  strained  to 
the  point  of  creating  an  inactive  currency,  the 
banker  ceases  to  earn  profits  from  the  money  of 
others  in  his  hands.  It  then  lies  idle  in  his  vaults, 
while  those  on  the  outside  are  suffering  for  what  it 


96  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

will  buy.  From  this  evil  the  bankers  have  suffered 
with  the  rest  of  the  people  during  the  past  five 
years. 

Q. — Would  not  the  free  coinage  of  silver' create 
inflation  of  prices,  and  cause  abnormal  develop- 
ment? 

A. — That  is  a  question  which  should  be  fought 
out  by  monometallists  themselves.  Some  teach 
that  doctrine.  Others  teach  the  opposite,  to- wit, 
that  it  would  drive  our  gold  away  and  produce  con- 
traction. There  is  still  another  unique  class 
(among  them  Professor  Laughlin)  who  teach  both 
doctrines.  The  last  named  are  on  safe  ground; 
just  as  the  man  was  who  shot  at  something  in  the 
bushes  which  he  didn't  see,  so  as  to  hit  if  it  was  a 
deer,  and  miss  if  it  was  a  calf. 

Q. — It  is  stated  that  the  silver  dollar  stands  on 
its  own  merits.  Now,  if  it  is  not  true  that.it  is 
backed  by  the  gold  dollar,  how  is  it  that  one  in 
Mexico  can  buy  a  dinner,  pay  for  it  with  a  United 
States  silver  dollar,  and  receive  back  in  change  a 
Mexican  coin  containing  more  silver  than  the  United 
States  dollar? 

A. — That  is  a  familiar  illustration,  and  always 
used — strange  to  say — by  the  monometallist,  while 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  97 

it  proves  more  for  the  advocate  of  silver.  If  we 
had  any  law  providing  for  the  redemption  of  a  sil- 
ver dollar  with  a  gold  dollar,  the  illustration  might 
be  serviceable  to  monometallism ;  but  having  no 
such  law,  let  us  see  where  the  illustration  ends. 
In  the  first  place,  Mexico  is  a  foreign  country  only 
in  a  political  sense,  not  in  a  geographical  sense. 
Hence  there  is  more  or  less  traffic  between  the  two 
countries  where  the  money  of  one  or  the  other  gov- 
ernment is  immediately  used.  Now,  the  mono- 
metallist  plants  himself  upon  the  rock,  that  a  dol- 
lar is  only  valuable  for  what  is  in  it  (intrinsic 
worth),  unless  redeemable  in  some  other  sort  of 
dollar.  Unquestionably  wheat  is  also  valuable  for 
its  intrinsic  worth.  So  we  have  :  The  more  metal 
the  more  intrinsic  worth  ;  and  the  more  wheat  the 
more  intrinsic  worth.  Suppose,  then,  the  citizen 
of  the  United  States  should  use  wheat  instead  of 
silver  in  paying  for  his  Mexican  dinner.  Would  he, 
on  paying  for  that  dinner  with  a  sack  of  wheat  con- 
taining one  bushel,  get  back  in  change  a  sack  con- 
taining more  than  a  bushel  of  wheat? 

The  United  States  dollar  is  a  better  dollar  than 
the  Mexican  dollar,  because  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment is  a  better  government,  and  its  people  a 


98  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

superior  people.  An  Englishman  will  give  more 
for  a  United  States  dollar  than  for  a  Mexican  dol- 
lar when  promised  in  a  bond,  and  we  have  seen  that 
he  makes  no  distinction  between  our  silver  dollars 
and  gold  dollars.  Our  silver  dollar  is  valuable  be- 
cause the  government  is  behind  it.  not  because  a  gold 
dollar  is  behind  it.  The  government  is  behind  both 
alike,  by  making  each  a  legal  tender  for  the  pay- 
ment of  debts,  public  and  private.  So  long  as  a 
silver  dollar  will  pay  as  much  as  a  gold  dollar,  just 
so  long  will  it  buy  as  much  as  a  gold  dollar.  It  is 
the  government  that  determines  what  the  silver 
dollar  will  pay,  hence  it  is  the  government  that 
keeps  up  the  silver  dollar.  It  is  keeping  it  up  in 
spite  of  the  low  price  of  silver  bullion. 

But  nothing  seems  to  distress  the  average 
monometallist  so  sorely  as  the  fact  that  our  govern- 
ment has  anything  to  do  with  or  power  over  our 
finances.  It  appears  to  be  his  preference  to  have 
our  financial  affairs  controlled  by  individuals  ;  and 
the  fewer  the  better. 

Q. — Isn't  gold  behind  the  silver  certificate1? 

A. — Just  as  silver  is.  Both  are  behind  it  under 
the  law,  which  makes  it  redeemable  in  coin — gold  or 
silver — at  the  will  of  the  government,  and  not  at  the 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  99 

will  of  the  holder.  Mr.  Carlisle,  however,  reversing 
this  order,  put  gold  alone  behind  silver  certificates 
and  all  other  forms  of  paper  money ;  and  his  per- 
formance has  thus  far  cost  the  American  people 
more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  need- 
less bonds — the  principal  and  interest  of  which 
debt  is  about  20  per  cent,  of  the  entire  circulating 
medium  of  this  country.  His  policy  is  to  increase 
our  credit  by  reducing  our  cash.  And  as  one  means 
of  justifying  his  course  he  has  taken  up  the  argu- 
ment (most  remarkable,  considering  the  source) 
that  checks,  drafts  and  bills  of  exchange  have 
greatly  reduced  the  necessity  for  a  circulating 
medium.  Those  who  respect  Mr.  Carlisle's  intellect 
(and  no  one  questions  that)  must  find  it  difficult 
to  believe  that  he  sincerely  makes  this  argument. 
When  Smith  gives  his  check  for  $100  to  Brown  for 
a  horse,  and  Brown  endorses  the  check  to  Jones, 
and  Jones  endorses  to  Johnson,  &c.,  the  check  in 
every  instance  is  doing  no  more  nor  less  than  $100 
would  do ;  and  the  $100  had  to  exist  before  the 
check  could  be  given.  Checks  and  drafts  undoubt- 
edly facilitate  commerce^  but  they  constitute  no 
part  of  the  currency,  and  cannot  take  the  place  of 
a  dollar  of  our  circulating  medium.  The  trouble 


100  THE  FIFTY-CEXT  DOLLAR. 

with  our  present  financial  policy  is  that  it  tends  to 
exact  two  of  Brown's  horses  for  Smith's  $100  check, 
when  one  horse  might  have  secured  it  under  condi- 
tions more  favorable  to  trade  and  commerce.  Mr. 
Carlisle,  in  his  public  addresses,  pictures  the  direful 
consequences  of  silver  legislation ;  reminding  the 
people  that  it  would  contract  the  currency",  causing 
paralysis  to  commerce  and  pressure  upon  the  debtor 
by  the  creditor.  This  sort  of  reasoning  might  be 
availing  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  similar  condi- 
tions, though  worse  than  his  imagination  pictures, 
have  prevailed  under  the  system  which  he  now  de- 
fends. 

When  a  gifted  man  becomes  eccentric  in  his 
administration  of  a  public  office,  his  eccentricity 
greatly  distances  that  of  an  ordinary  mortal.  Of 
this  truth  Lord  Bacon  was  an  illustrious  example. 

Q. — Can  we  attempt  a  financial  system  of  our 
own,  independent  of  all  other  nations? 

A. — An  essential  feature  of  every  organized 
government  is  its  financial  system ;  and  to  ac- 
knowledge dependence  in  that  particular  is  a  con- 
fession of  dependence  in  every  particular.  We  se- 
cured our  political  independence  of  England  when 
the  entire  population  of  this  country  was  about 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  101 

equal  to  that  of  New  York  City  and  Brooklyn  to- 
day. Yet,  with  our  seventy  millions  of  people  and 
our  limitless  resources,  it  is  seriously  doubted 
whether  we  can  now  maintain  a  financial  system 
that  is  not  dictated  by  the  Rothschilds  and  their 
American  coadjutors.  There  can  be  no  such  thing 
as  an  international  monetary  system  until  each 
country,  bg  legislation,  makes  the  money  of  other 
countries  legal  tender  among  its  own  people.  Life, 
even  of  a  nation,  is  rather  too  short  to  wait  for  such 
thing  as  that. 

Q. — Does  the  coining  of  a  given  amount  of 
silver  and  calling  it  a  dollar  make  it  a  dollar? 

A. — By  no  means.  Such  suggestions  only  come 
from  those  who  fail  to  comprehend  that  money  gets 
its  function  from  the  legal  tender  quality  imparted 
to  it  by  law.  To  be  worth  100  cents  the  silver  dol- 
lar must  be  made  good  for  the  payment  of  public 
and  private  debts  to  the  extent  of  100  cents.  When 
that  is  done,  it  is  worth  as  much,  as  the  gold  dollarr 
which  can  do  no  more  than  pay  100  cents.  The 
trade  dollar  is  stamped  100  cents,  and  has  more 
silver  in  it  than  the  legal  tender  silver  dollar,  but 
is  only  so  much  silver  bullion,  worth  its  market 
price ;  because  the  government,  after  creating  itr 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 


deprived  it  of  legal  tender  quality.  Thus  emascu- 
lated, it  is  not  money  at  all. 

Q.  —  If  this  financial  question  is  largely  an  issue 
between  this  country  and  England,  how  is  it  that 
the  section  of  the  United  States  known  as  the  East 
is  so  strong  for  monometallism? 

A.  —  The  relations  of  the  South  and  West  to 
the  East  on  this  question  are  in  many  respects  sim- 
ilar to  those  of  the  entire  country  to  England.  The 
East  largely  controls  the  currency  of  this  country  ; 
and  the  South  and  West  are  largely  indebted  to 
that  section.  The  East  consumes  Western  wheat, 
and  manufactures  Southern  cotton,  hence  is  inter- 
ested in  keeping  the  price  of  each  down.  The 
monied  interests  of  the  East,  therefore,  incline 
naturally  to  a  financial  system  that  is  best  calcu- 
lated to  absorb  the  wealth  of  the  other  sections  of 
the  country.  In  the  meantime  the  masses  in  the 
East  are  not  benefitted.  A  contracting  currency 
affects  the  masses  unfavorably  everywhere. 

Q.  —  Would  Mexico  and  China  be  where  they 
are,  but  for  the  fact  that  they  are  exclusively  silver 
countries? 

A.  —  Those  two  countries  have  been  used  most 
successfully  to  create  prejudice  against  silver  in 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  103 

this  country.  It  has  never  been  proposed  to  use 
silver  exclusively  in  the  United  States,  hence  the 
parallel  fails  in  the  outset. 

The  miserable  condition  of  the  Chinese,  so  far 
as  their  money  affects  them,  is  more  due  to  their 
lack  of  silver  than  to  their  use  of  it.  With  their 
small  supply  of  money  (about  $2  per  capita)  their 
commerce  is  better  conducted  with  silver  than  it 
could  possibly  be  with  gold,  and  a  substitution  of 
gold  for  silver  would  lower  their  condition.  Turkey 
is  a  gold  standard  country,  with  a  per  capita  sup- 
ply about  equal  to  that  of  China.  Why  do  not  our 
monometallists  cite  that  country  as  a  shining  exam- 
ple of  civilization  and  advancement?  It  is  little 
more  than  a  barbaric  race — far  behind  China  and 
Mexico  in  everything  going  to  make  a  thrifty,  en- 
terprising people. 

The  Mexicans  are  a  race  gangrened  with  vice 
and  thriftlessness.  Their  silver  product  is  their 
chief  source  of  life,  and  sustains  them  against  a 
much  lower  condition.  Had  they  more  enterprise 
their  returns,  in  the  form  of  home  products,  would 
be  many  times  greater  than  those  realized  from 
silver,  exchanged  for  the  products  of  other  coun- 
tries. They  prefer  idleness,  while  living  in  huts 


104  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

and,  as  far  as  possible,  upon  native  fruits.  They 
trade  their  silver,  coined  and  uncoined,  to  other 
countries,  instead  of  utilizing  it  as  a  circulating 
medium  at  home.  In  the  meantime  a  gold  stand- 
ard would  do  for  Mexico  what  it  would  do  for 
China — put  it  in-  a  still  worse  condition  and  more 
at  the  mercy  of  other  countries.  Mexico  and  China, 
with  their  wretched  governments  and  still  more 
wretched  people,  are  held  up  as  scare-crows  only 
by  those  who  would  persuade  the  American  people 
that  they  are  not  a  superior  race  to  Chinamen  and 
Mexicans.  Those  who  innocently  resort  to  such 
tactics  do  so  through  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  sil- 
ver has  never  done  any  possible  harm  to  Mexico  or 
China. 

History  wholly  fails  to  teach  that  the  use  of 
either  gold  or  silver  as  money  ever  made  a  nation 
great  or  kept  it  from  becoming  so.  But  history 
does  teach  that  the  more  limited  the  supply  of 
money  (whether  from  necessity  or  choice)  the  more 
dwarfed  the  nation,  and  the  wider  the  gulf  between 
the  rich  few  and  the  poverty-ridden  masses.  This 
is  true,  whether  the  money  in  use  be  silver  or  gold, 
as  illustrated  by  the  three  countries,  Mexico,  Tur- 
key and  China.  France,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  105 

example  in  the  opposite  direction.  With  a  greater 
volume  of  money  than  any  other  country  in  the 
world  ($36  per  capita),  wealth  is  more  evenly  dis- 
tributed there  than  in  any  other  country;  and  her 
people  are  more  thrifty  and  better  contented  than 
any  other  people  on  earth. 

Mr.  Carlisle  says  that  England  was  five  hun- 
dred years  discovering  that  bi-metallism  was  a 
failure.  It  is  remarkable  that  it  took  so  long  to 
discover  the  fact,  with  a  daily  test  of  the  proof.  It 
is  still  more  remarkable  that  the  United  States 
and  Germany  were  more  than  half  a  century  find- 
ing out  what  England  had  discovered,  and  have 
never  yet  been  content  with  the  proof.  But  a  still 
more  remarkable  fact  was  the  sudden  dawning  of 
this  English  discovery  upon  Mr.  Carlisle,  after 
twenty  years  of  illustrious  public  service  devoted 
to  denying  that  such  discovery  had  ever  been  made. 

The  great  nations  that  have  sought  to  reduce 
their  money  supply  by  demonetization,  are  great  in 
spite  of  the  fact,  and  not  by  reason  of  it.  England 
does  not  date  her  greatness  from  1816,  nor  do  the 
United  States  and  Germany  date  their  greatness 
from  1873.  The  periods  mentioned  represent  those 
stages  in  a  country's  development  when  the  power 
8 


106  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

of  accumulated  wealth  becomes  a  menace  to  gov- 
ernment, which  it  uses  to  rob  the  masses.  George 
Washington,  Thomas  Jefferson,  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin and  John  Hancock  were  among  the  wealthiest 
men  of  their  day  in  this  country.  They  were  also 
among  our  foremost  statesmen  and  patriots.  But 
advancement  of  a  nation  destroys  this  parity  be- 
tween great  wealth  and  patriotism.  Few  of  the 
multi-millionaires  of  the  present  day  have  even 
political  convictions.  Politics  with  them  is  like 
everything  else — it  is  business, 

Demonetization  is  not  the  normal,  but  the 
fungous  growth,  which  attends  civilization  and  ad- 
advancement.  It  was  reached  here  sooner  than  in 
Europe,  because  development  and  wealth  grew 
faster  here.  Demonetization  never  originates  with 
the  people  at  large,  nor  with  the  government  itself, 
but  with  the  few  who  become  powerful  enough  to 
dictate  to  government.  This  fact  is  now  being  il- 
lustrated every  day,  in  the  strenuous  efforts  to 
show  that  at  least  members  of  Congress  knew  what 
was  done  in  1873  ;  though  it  is  admitted  on  all  sides 
that  the  most  of  them  did  not  know  what  was  being 
done.  Indeed  they  have  about  all  admitted  it 
themselves.  And  it  is  well  known  that  the  people 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  107 

had  demanded  nothing  of  the  kind,  and  were 
equally  ignorant  with  the  head  of  the  government 
of  what  was  occurring  in  the  way  of  legislation.  It 
was  a  mischievous  child  whose  parentage  will  al- 
ways be  enveloped  in  mystery. 

Those  countries,  including  our  own,  which, 
under  some  overwhelming  influence,  have  stricken 
silver,  have  been  compelled  at  the  same  time  to 
recognize  its  necessity  by  its  continued  use.  The 
money  scientist  heretofore  alluded  to,  Professor 
Laughlin,  in  order  to  demonstrate  that  silver  has 
not  been  so  badly  treated  after  all,  triumphantly 
shows  that  the  world  uses  more  of  it  today  than  it 
did  twenty  years  ago.  This  increased  supply  has 
been  mainly  secured  in  America,  through  the  Acts 
of  1878  and  1890.  But  why  does  Professor  Laugh- 
lin, and  all  like  him,  not  admit  that  the  source  of 
our  silver  supply  was  cut  off  in  1893;  and  that  we 
must  eventually,  under  the  present  system,  become 
a  race  of  miserable  serfs  to  the  holders  of  our  bonds 
(whether  public  or  private)  payable  at  last  only  in 
gold.  Why  do  they  not  cite  us  to  some  law  where- 
by we  may  go  on  forever  using  silver?  Why  does 
Mr.  Carlisle  tell  us  that  "silver  is  not  now  demone- 
tized in  this  country,  as  it  is  in  England,  Germany 


108  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

and  other  countries,  but  is  in  constant  use  among 
the  people  as  full  legal  tender  money?"  Does  he 
mean  to  felicitate  the  American  people  upon  the 
fact  that  the  government  has  not  confiscated  the 
silver  already  coined  and  allowed  to  the  people  as 
money  !  And  does  he  mean  to  say  that  closing  the 
mints  of  this  country  to  silver  is  not  demonetiza- 
tion? That  is  what  the  people  understand  by  de- 
monetization of  silver.  That  was  done  in  1873, 
and  after  a  struggle  of  twenty  years  to  restore  it 
(with  partial  success)  was  again  done  in  1893. 
Since  the  latter  deed  was  accomplished,  have  the 
American  people  heard  one  word  from  the  powers 
that  be,  intimating  that  silver — so  far  as  the  matter 
concerned  them — was  not  doomed  in  this  country 
forever?  The  unsophisticated  American  citizen,  so 
much  perplexed  and  so  much  bewildered  on  this 
question,  finds  it  impossible  to  understand  the 
theory  upon  which  the  two  acts  of  demonetization 
were  passed.  But  the  wiser  ones  are  beset  with  the 
same  difficulty.  For  twenty-five  years  preceding 
the  first  act  we  produced  unprecedented  quantities 
of  gold  ;  and  silver  was  demonetized.  During  the 
twenty  years  following  we  produced  unprecedented 
quantities  of  silver ;  and  silver  was  again  demone- 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR.  109 

tized.  The  conditions  as  to  the  two  metals  having 
been  reversed,  why  this  second  blow  at  silver'? 
Had  England  no  hand  in  all  this? 

England  knows  that  with  free  coinage  of 
silver  in  this  country,  nothing  could  stay  our 
progress  to  a  destiny  that  would  distance  her  and 
the  whole  earth  besides.  She  knows  that  with  the 
balance  of  trade  against  us,  four  years  would  suf- 
fice to  absorb  all  our  present  supply  of  gold  in  the 
payment  of  interest  alone  to  that  country.  She 
knows  that  with  a  gold  standard,  and  no  additions 
to  our  currency  from  silver,  we  cannot  preserve  the 
balance  of  trade,  and  that  we  would  thus  become 
her  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  forever. 

The  greatest  annual  gold  product  of  the  entire 
world  was  $155,000,000  in  1853.  The  average  an- 
nual product  since  that  year  has  not  been  far  above 
$100,000,000  ;  and  five  of  the  years  since  1853  it  fell 
below  $100,000,000.  This  decline  is  taking  place 
while  the  world's  population  is  increasing,  and  gold 
is  being  more  and  more  used  in  the  arts  and 
sciences.  The  gold  money  of  the  world  to-day  is 
about  $2.50  to  every  individual.  On  reducing  all 
the  countries  of  the  earth  to  a  gold  standard  (which 
England  seems  to  be  rapidly  accomplishing)  our 


110  THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR. 

share,  on  an  equal  divide,  would  be  less  than  two 
hundred  millions — less  than  the  estimated  annual 
interest  debt  of  this  country  to  England,  say  noth- 
ing of  the  principal.  It  is  true,  as  before  stated, 
England  would  not  (could  not)  have  us  pay  all  our 
indebtedness  at  once,  but  would  prefer  to  bleed  us 
slowly,  that  the  draught  of  blood  might  be  the  more 
fattening. 

But  should  England  be  thus  talked  about? 
No ;  England's  masses  are  as  philanthropic  as  are 
the  masses  in  this  country.  It  is,  after  all,  the  same 
Shylock  of  whom  Shakespeare  wrote,  who  is  afflict- 
ing England  alike  with  America. 

We  may,  if  we  will,  escape  the  yoke  before  it 
is  fastened  upon  our  necks  forever.  In  doing  it, 
however,  we  must  avoid  the  mesmeric  influence  of 
better  times  in  the  near  future.  They  can,  and 
will,  be  forced  by  the  same  influences  that  forced 
the  needless  hard  times.  Through  this  means  every 
effort  is  now  being  used,  and  will  continue  to  be 
used,  to  lull  a  long-suffering  people  into  acqui- 
escence. It  is  a  question  not  alone  for  the  present 
generation,  but  for  our  children  and  posterity  for- 
ever. It  is  a  question,  however,  that  will  be  settled 


THE  FIFTY-CENT-DOLLAR.  Ill 

in  the  present  conflict,  whether  it  shall  last  long  or 
be  ended  soon. 

To  achieve  victory  we  must  turn  from  those 
who  have  deceived  us  with  their  pratings  about 
ratio,  parity,  yard-sticks  and  units.  These  terms 
have  their  legitimate  meaning  as  applied  to  money, 
but  they  have  been  used  to  ensnare.  Those  using 
them  are  so  many  Neros  fiddling  while  Rome  burns  ; 
and  it  was  Nero  himself  who  set  fire  to  Rome. 

Germany  and  other  nations  are  looking  on 
hopefully  at  the  present  conflict  in  proud  America. 
To  us  is  left  the  honor  of  leading  in  the  assault 
upon  demonetization — that  juggernaut  of  the  nine- 
teenth century ;  that  form  of  repudiation  most  in- 
famous ;  that  whited  sepulcher,  posing  as  a  saint, 
and  exacting  two  drops  of  sweat,  two  pounds  of 
flesh,  where  one  was  promised. 

When  America  shall  have  felled  this  monster, 
other  nations  will  rush  to  secure  its  death  and 
eternal  burial.  The  palm  will  then  be  ours,  and 
the  dawn  of  the  twentieth  century  will  disclose  our 
beloved  country  at  the  head  of  the  column,  leading 
the  nations  of  the  earth  to  a  still  higher  destiny. 
It  is  America's  birthright  to  lead,  not  to  follow. 


EUGENt 
L.O*  ANO*ueS.    CAi.4?* 


. 


I 


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§ 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


000104395    9 


